


Gunshots

by salazar_or_whatever



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, M/M, Organized Crime, Sex, Violence, lots of cussing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2020-05-20 19:58:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19383670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazar_or_whatever/pseuds/salazar_or_whatever
Summary: "Those fuckers sure do take their time. Feels like he’s seen his life unfold before his eyes for literal hours. That’s not how it works. Should be taking seconds. Should be taking seconds and not be all about some asshole he hasn’t seen for years. He Tian could be dead, by now, Guan Shan would not know.  Probably not, but still."Guan Shan gets kidnapped, and it pisses him off.





	1. Impromptu

**Author's Note:**

> So... It will probably occur to you that my english is broken 'cause it's not my mother tongue and I'm trying to learn english creative writing.
> 
> It might seem messy too, idk. For now I like it.
> 
> I wrote this listening to Bad Religion by Frank Ocean, Valentine by Justice and Blue Side by J-Hope. Feel free to listen to these tracks while reading this, or some other time, or never...
> 
> I also wrote it while frying. And they say global warming is not real...
> 
> Oh, and general overuse of the f-bomb. But like, it's so overused it should be written OVERUUUUUUUUUUUSED.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

 

Pretty little thing, red broken and bloody on the floor.

 

 _I’m not fucking pretty, asshole. I’m not fucking little, and_ I am not _your fucking thing’_ is what he thinks, but not really. It’s not a thought, not really, more of a memory, a vague and _impromptu_ recollection.

 

“ _You know what ‘impromptu’ means, Red ?”_ Silky voice. So far away, so distant. He misses it, now. _“Who fucking cares ?”_ he had answered then, and He Tian had said nothing at the time. He had stopped hitting Mo when the redhead was telling him to shut the fuck up, but didn’t quite manage to take it as lightly as he would months later. He was changing. Shifting. You could see he didn’t understand it himself. You could see he was as confused as Red was. Sometimes, Red would tell him to fuck off, would see the furrow of his brows, and would never really know if it was restraint or confusion. He Tian himself probably didn’t know.

 

 

A punch lands right on his nose, snapping in an instant. He hears it more than he feels it. Been taking so much of those that his face feels numb, now. Doesn’t even know why he is still awake. Still alive.

 

 

‘ _Wake up, Red.’_ Over time, he had become good at this. He knew what to do to lower the level of annoyance He Tian loved to inflict upon him. So he didn’t tell him to fuck off. He didn’t groan, didn’t shout. He said nothing. He didn’t tense either, because otherwise, He Tian would have known he was faking it, was not really still asleep. _‘Come on Little Mo, a bet is a bet. I’ll get you out of bed myself if I have to...’_ He already knew what was about to come, because He Tian wasn’t able to mention a bed without making it sexual immediately afterwards, just to annoy Guan Shan, just to mess with him, just to watch him blush, try to hit him, fail to do so. But Red knew what was about to come, had time to prepare mentally, downplaying it by anticipating it, and stayed silent when he heard He Tian’s shameless voice utter _‘Or are you waiting for me to join you? Is that an invitation Little Mo?’_

Guan Shan ignored the embarrassment and the blazing little spark in his guts, the one he had been pushing away for months, and kept still, stayed silent. And for quite a bit, he didn’t hear anything from He Tian, thought he must have been planning something, something mischievous, impish, something to elicit a reaction from him, but the only thing that came messed with Red’s head. ‘ _Guan Shan.. ?’_ It was low, and it was a little desperate, a little out of breath, and Red could almost feel the ache. Maybe Red had become a little too good at this. Maybe he was now able to fully dupe him, and maybe it was not a good thing. Maybe it was dangerous. For him, for others.

He knew He Tian thought something wrong was happening. Something awfully wrong. And he should have said something, got out of bed, and followed him to wherever he had wanted to bring him to in the first place, but he didn’t have time for any of it.

He heard the fast footsteps of He Tian, felt his fingers against his neck, taking his pulse. Opened his eyes, saw the despair in He Tian’s eyes, so close. Saw it morph into anger. His jaw clenching. Felt the fingers against his neck leaving, replaced by a full hand encircling it, without tightening, not really, just a bit. And all he could think was, _there is something more, right ?_ Something more than He Tian wanting him to cook and clean for his ass. Something more than He Tian wanting his ass. His eyes shifted from Red’s eyes to his lips, and for a split second, Guan Shan believed it. Believed that He Tian was going to kiss him, and he didn’t care, he wanted it, wanted it so bad, so fucking bad. But then He Tian backed off. _‘Fine, stay here if that’s what you want.’_ he said bitterly, and then left. He didn’t speak to him for weeks after that.

 

 

Pretty little thing, red broken and bloody on the floor. He feels pathetic. Small and alone. So fucking alone. He feels something ripping his throat open, then realizes he’s laughing.

“Why is he laughing?”

Guan Shan can’t see the guys anymore, the ones who've been beating him up. He hasn’t been able to for a few minutes now. Wouldn’t be shocked if he was to be told that his eyes were gouged. Feels like they’re swimming in a pool of blood. Miserable.

“Fuck if I know… Might be a psycho.”

Those fuckers sure do take their time. Feels like he’s seen his life unfold before his eyes for literal hours. That’s not how it works. Should be taking seconds. Should be taking seconds and not be all about some asshole he hasn’t seen for years. He Tian could be dead, by now, Guan Shan would not know. Probably not, but still.

 

 

He didn’t speak to him for weeks after that, and Red decided that it was fine. That he finally had what he had wanted from the very beginning: peace. Nobody to bother him. Buzzcut was sometimes a bit of an annoyance, but it was fine, because unlike some other douchebag, Buzzcut had first started with being his friend, not with beating the shit out of him… Not that he would have been able to.

Sometimes, Red forgot how good of a fighter he actually could be when he wanted to. How good he was before He Tian decided to show up. Well… He Tian had always been there, but the day he decided to show off his fighting skills was the day Guan Shan started doubting himself more than he ever dared to admit to himself. And maybe it was for the better. Or maybe, just maybe, it had affected the redhead’s confidence. Maybe that’s why He Tian stopped beating him up. Because even this shitbrain could see how unfair it was. How damaging it was. How damaging _he_ was. Maybe he still knew how unfair he had been, because he didn’t speak to him for weeks, waiting for Mo to do the first step or whatever, waiting for something that would never come because Guan Shan’s pride was still in pieces because of him, of course he wasn’t going to run back to him, wagging his fucking tail and giving one paw and then the other.

So He Tian went back to Mo after weeks of not speaking to him, and decided to stop stopping speaking to him. One day, he stood in front of the redhead, waiting for a reaction that Red was refusing to give him. He Tian could see how agitated he was making him, how Red was feeling the edge of his nails with his thumb while he tried to focus his attention on something else, a girl, far away, putting something between her lips. A lollipop? A cigarette?

“ _Would you have let me, Little Mo?”_ He Tian asked, voice playful but still expectant, and Guan Shan hated that it had been weeks of them not speaking to each other but that he still knew what He Tian was talking about. _If I hadn’t left the last time we spoke, would you have let me kiss you?_ was what he wanted to ask. _Would you have let me fuck you?_ was what he wouldn't dare to ask.He felt how He Tian’s gaze was trying to catch his, how he was struggling with being ignored. They stayed like this for a minute, and then Red saw a hand entering his field of vision, but didn’t let He Tian catch his jaw between his fingers. Instead, with a movement of his chin, he pointed at the girl he was focusing on. _“Is that a lollipop or a cigarette?”_ He could feel how irritating it was to He Tian, but after a few seconds, he turned to the girl, brought his right thumb and index to his mouth, and whistled at her. _“Cigarette.”_ He Tian answered at the way she panicked and threw away the whole thing. Guan Shan couldn’t help but chuckle at the fast pace she took to leave, and just like that, He Tian seemed to soften. He let himself lean against the fence next to the redhead, putting an arm around his shoulders and catching his wrist before he could even think of getting off of him. He could have sworn he had felt something wet on his ear before he heard He Tian whisper _“I missed you, Little Mo. I missed you so much...”_

 

 

He misses him so bad it hurts. He’s way past the point of denying it now. He’s sad. Sad and alone, being beaten up to death by two guys without even knowing why. Well, nah… He knows. It just seems pointless to be fair… At least now he remembers why he never was one to stand up for others in the first place. Getting fucked is all you ever get from it. There simply is no justice, so why even try to show compassion and mercy? Compassion and mercy get people killed, that’s what he had learned and forgotten. Now he remembers. 

Ah… He misses the days where it was all about He Tian, always all about him, because of him, always his fault. It was simpler.

He would have heard the distinct noise of a metal door being kicked open if it wasn’t for the buzzing in his ears. That, and the rush of blood going through his body. He hears nothing outside, but what is being broken and moved and smashed inside of him, that he hears clearly. As if his body was screaming to him, telling him that it had enough. Well too bad, there’s no way out of this. He’s probably going to fucking die here.

“Fuck, I knew you two were dumbshits, but I thought that you had at least some common sense, even just a little bit!”

“What is it?”

“This guy’s been fooling around with one of the sons of the He clan.”

But this, he hears clearly, and he shouldn’t, because fuck if it doesn’t hurt, but oh boy can’t he help but laugh. _More like_ _we_ _jerked_ _each other_ _off_ _once, three years ago._

“Yeah, and?”

“Well that’s your fucking problem if you see your life as worth nothing, but I highly value mine!”

“Well if he cared that much, wouldn’t we be dead by now?”

“I mean… He’s right. You'd think he would put like fifteen men around this guy if he cared. And I mean, we were pretty much out in the open when we kidnapped him.”

“Yep, we didn’t even try to make that a secret.”

There’s a laugh. Sounds fake. Sounds pissed.

“Fuck, we’re so fucked!”

He must have passed out for a bit, because when he wakes up, he’s sitting on a chair, and his eyes aren’t actually gouged, and some guy in front of him is on the phone. Judging by the desperate look on his face, it’s definitely not a pleasant conversation. It explains the half-emptied whiskey bottle in his hand.

 

 

“ _And then his head kind of smashed against a wall. I didn’t mean to, but it just did… He didn’t die though. I'm pretty sure he was fine. From what I’ve heard at least… I mean I went hard, but not that hard…”_ For some reason, He Tian seemed proud of himself. For some reason, he still managed to have a coherent conversation even while being completely drunk. He didn’t walk straight though, but Red couldn’t make fun of him, because he didn’t either, and he had way less than He Tian. _“He Tian”_ he said, and He Tian seemed surprised, because Mo barely ever called his name, was too much initiative for him, felt like he was losing if he was to talk to him for anything else than answering him. _“Call me a taxi, I’m fucking exhausted. I’ll repay when I can.”_ He seemed surprised. Again. Drunk, he showed way more of his emotions, didn’t seem to try and hide it all. _“What do you mean, ‘call me a taxi’? My place is five minutes away, just stay the night.”_

But Guan Shan felt it in his guts the moment the alcohol started to kick in. How he should stay away, for now. He caught himself looking for too long, losing himself in He Tian, in his features, in his aura, in his everything. He caught himself craving him, and he knew it was the alcohol – _thought he knew_ – didn’t have this kind of thought when sober, – _thought he didn’t_ – but he was not, he was very much drunk, and very, _very much_ attracted to He Tian. It would disgust him, tomorrow morning, thinking of him thinking this kind of things, but he knew that right now, a word, a gesture, anything would get him what he was craving, and he had to run away from it. He Tian would give it all, he was sure of it. He would give it all and more.

“ _Shut up, just call the taxi already, I don’t feel good.”_ But He Tian didn’t call a taxi, didn’t even reach for his phone. No. A cocky smile, a hand on Red’s forehead, he was suddenly so close. _“Little Mo is feeling sick. It’s no good… I guess I’ll have to take care of him…”_ Red didn’t manage to catch the breath that escaped him at his words, at his proximity. He saw the confusion on his face, felt his own heartbeat going crazy. He wanted to run, to flee, but he was too drunk for that. He would catch him. He would catch him, and he would understand, and then Red would be trapped. _“Little Mo?”_ he heard, and there was a darkness in He Tian’s eyes, one he knew well. A while ago, he saw it when He Tian really wanted to beat someone up. For a few months now, he saw it more and more when He Tian was looking at him. It looked like hunger. Like lust. Like… like fucking _sin_. _“Fuck, leave me alone, I’ll go back by myself!”_

And for a moment, he did. But from where they were, the road to his home was the same as the road to He Tian’s place, and He Tian kept his distance, stayed a few meters behind, said nothing. And then, right in front of He Tian’s building, he heard an unsteady breath in his ear, felt a hand on his junk, and a body pressing against his back and Red… he fucking… he fucking _whined_. _“_ _I knew it.”_ He Tian said, and then he repeated it again and again and again, and Red didn’t even care for the shocked look on the building manager’s face when he saw them grinding against each other against the closed doors of the elevator. No, he couldn’t give less of a fuck, tugging He Tian’s shirt in his fingers with one hand, the other on his ass just to get him closer, to get more friction, more of anything, anything he could give him. _“You were running away from this, huh? That’s fucking mean Little Mo, trying to get me to call a cab because you wanted me this bad…_ _Trying to get me to cockblock myself…_ _Did you want me to do it because you knew you wanted this so bad you would have hung up anyway?”_

He didn’t answer, said things along the lines of “Fuck, more.” and then the doors of the elevator opened, Red pushed against the mirror inside, and then they closed. He felt like he was melting, shattering, felt like his whole world was being reduced to one word: _finally._ But still, in the middle of the bursting of his world, there was a voice in his head, the last fragments of his now past life that still remained. A voice that told him to flee when He Tian tried to catch his lips with his own. _“Wait.”_ he said, almost disappointed when He Tian completely stilled. _“I’m not… I don’t...”_ he tried, and He Tian seemed… scared? Scared of what Red was going to say. _“I don’t like men...”_ He wanted to take it back the moment he said it, because yeah, right, he didn’t like men, but he felt like if He Tian was to make only one step back he would fucking beg him to come back, because he was He Tian. He Tian, He Tian, _He Tian_ , and he didn’t like men – _right?_ – but that was not the same, and… A chuckle. _“Of course not.”_

And suddenly, his feet weren’t on the ground anymore, and his back was pushed against the mirror of the elevator, and He Tian’s hands were on his ass, holding him, and the doors opened, slightly ringing; they were there, meters away from He Tian’s place, but who cared? It was happening here, in the elevator, what point was there to move? Why would they? The way He Tian was grinding against him now was brutal, vicious, as if… As if he was trying to prove a point. Labored breathing, he was getting off on the reflection of Red bouncing in his arms, and Mo could feel it in his entire body. He never felt that good before. _“Of course not, Little Mo. You don’t like men. That’s not what it is. You don’t like men.”_ He didn’t know how, or when, but He Tian’s thumb was in his mouth, and his eyes were eating him, swallowing him whole. He knew he was about to drop the bomb. _“Isn’t that strange, though? How bad you want me to fuck you, hm?_ _But no, you don’t like men. Only me. You want me. Nobody else, right?”_ It hit him too hard, and the fucker kept going, and his hips too, and only at that point did Red realize he was reciprocating every last bit of it, seeking more friction, listening to everything the other boy said, listening to him moaning in between words – it was obscene, so beautifully obscene – _“You don’t need to like men… Or women for that matter._ _I don’t fucking care who you like if it’s not me._ _Like me. Only me. I’ll give you everything, Guan Shan. Every bit of it. Anything, I’ll give it all to you._ _Say… What do you want?”_

“ _Everything… Gimme everything… Fucking… Ruin yourself. Just...”_

“ _Yeah? Think you can take it all, Red? Everything of me?”_

“ _Gimme… Give it all. I… I want more than this, fucker. I want you on your knees…”_

“ _But I’ve been for so long already… You would have known… You would have known if only you would look at me… Why don’t you fucking look at me Mo?”_

“ _Shut the fuck up already. Touch me.”_

And suddenly, there they were, Red’s feet on the ground, He Tian behind him, jerking each other off, guiding each other hands while watching their reflections in the mirror. Yeah, Red was looking ruined, but that was not the point, not when He Tian looked so beautifully wrecked too. That was what he had always wanted. He wanted this He Tian, the one that looked at him as if he was some kind of god, almighty, absolute and supreme, not the douchebag that looked down on him. He felt proud. He felt like everything He Tian had broken in his path, he was now rebuilding, just by the weight of his gaze on him, by the words whispered in his ears, by the heavy breaths against his skin, by the gentle kisses on his neck and the languid strokes of the hand on his cock. _“_ _Everything. I’ll give you everything you want. Everything. I can… You know I can...”_ Of course he could. He had proved it more than once. _“So what do you want from me Guan Shan? Tell me already, I’m tired of_ _taking_ _guess_ _es_ _...”_ He didn’t know, never knew what he wanted from He Tian. Thought he wanted him away from him until he didn’t anymore. He never knew, but hearing the desperate voice in his ear, he knew part of what he wanted was this. Power over the most powerful and commanding person he had ever met. He wanted to shatter the unbreakable, just for a few minutes, even if he had to feel himself implode in the process.

And implode he did. Heard himself cry out, his own voice echoing in his mind, tried to catch hold of it, but couldn’t quite control himself, couldn’t handle himself, because had he ever felt that good? Sure he came, but it was way more than that… It felt right. It felt so… so right. He heard a laugh. An out-of-breath, incredulous, delirious kind of laugh. _“I did that.”_ He Tian said, seeming high on some type of drug, but Red knew… He knew it was him, the drug. Knew he had that effect, made him vulnerable, compliant, flowy. _“I did that.”_ he said again in some kind of delirium, bringing his hand to his mouth to taste Red and Red can’t help but moan. Again, and again, and again, louder when he feels He Tian shudder behind him. Coming.

 

 

“Understood. Yes, sir. Yes. No, sir. I’ll make sure it won’t happen.”

The angry guy from before seems agitated, not that Red cares. He seems so docile, like that. That boss of his must be a real pain in the ass. He watches him hang up, and turn to the two guys that spent the last hours beating him up.

“Kill him. Drop him in front of the Red Latte and make it up so that they think it’s on the Zhu clan, not ours.”

Ah. Well… At least, he can take pride in the fact that he had seen it coming.

“Wait… That’s He Cheng’s nightclub...”

“Aren’t you a smart one?”

“You want us to drop his ass in front of He Cheng’s club for fuck sake! That’s suicide!”

“Oh, now you start to think! It’s kinda late, don’t you think? If we leave him like that, we’re as good as dead!”

“We can just fucking kill him here! No need to dive in shit head first!”

“You don’t get it, do you? It can take days, weeks, months, years, but the day they understand he’s gone, we’re fucked. They’ll be on to us. They know, they always have, they always will, no matter how long it takes for them to find out the truth. We’re lucky they don’t know already. The only way we can escape that now is to mislead them. _If you can’t kill it, hit_ _it_ _hard enough for you_ _to have time_ _to flee without it knowing which direction you t_ _ook_ _._ ”

Yeah, right. He doesn’t know shit about He Tian’s family, but he knows one thing for sure; the joke’s on them, they’re fucking dead already. They’ll probably be pissing themselves and begging for mercy. At least Red is going to die with dignity. Pissing them off until the very end. He feels his jaw aching, figures he might be smiling. Not sure, though. Who cares anyway, he’s not even sure there are still teeth in there.

“Is that fucker smiling right now?”

Well, apparently he is smiling. Maybe just with his gums, but still. That’s something considering he’s agonizing.

“Yes he is.”

“Didn’t you hear the part where we kill ya?”

 _Just because I can’t talk doesn’t mean I can’t hear, dumbass_.

“I guess he’s gone insane.”

“A shame, I like the fear in their eyes when they know it’s the end.”

The psycho has the nerves to snap his fingers at him.

“Hey bitch, listen to me…”

There’s a punch landing on his ribs. Well, on what’s left of ‘em.

“I said, listen to me.”

 

 

“ _Red… Listen to me. If you leave, I’ll make you regret it for a long while… You’ll regret this Mo, I’ll make sure of it, do you understand? You’ll pay for it! Don’t fucking treat me like this!”_ It was not supposed to happen. It was wrong. It was wrong, no matter how right it felt. He was struggling to breathe, he wanted to run. Run far, far away. And for once, it had nothing to do with the anger on He Tian’s face. No, he wanted to run far away. A place where He Tian wasn’t the focal point of his thoughts, where he wasn’t dying to be touched by him. Not sober. Not drunk. A place where he didn’t exist. He was too much. It felt like too much. Like he was drowning. He felt like pushing that button to get back to the hallway was his end. _“If it’s a matter of people finding out, I won’t tell a soul. It doesn’t have to happen ever again just… Don’t. Fucking. Leave.”_ He sounded so angry, and yet so desperate… Could he see how much Red was, too? How desperate he was to leave and stay at the same time? How desperate he was to leave because he wanted to stay so much? The doors of the elevator opened on the hallway. Fresh air clashed with the condensed heat in the cabin, but Red still felt himself suffocating. He felt like there was no place for him other than this lift. Like there was no place in the world, because he didn’t want to feel like He Tian was home, was his home, was the person he would always want to come back to. He had to run from this. He couldn’t trust this guy. He had to run from him. Couldn’t trust him with anything, and certainly not his heart. He tried to leave, but a hand on his wrist prevented him from doing so. _“Please, at least… Tell me you wanted this… I didn’t force it on you, right? I didn’t want to hurt you… I never… If I did I… Mo… Tell me...”_

“ _You didn’t hurt me.”_

 

 

“What’s that? All we hear when you talk are fucking gurgles, that’s gross… Can’t you try to be a little less pathetic?”

“He’s clearly out of it...”

He feels a rope being tied to his legs. He doesn’t care anymore.

“I’ll attach that to the car. Just slit his throat already.”

“Oh come on, we’re risking our lives to deliver him to his pimp, let him enjoy the ride.”

 

 

“ _I don’t trust you. I never will.”_

“ _Why is that?”_

“ _Sometimes I feel like you’re-”_

 

 

It doesn’t hurt. He’s past that point. He feels it, but he’s out of it. He feels the first stab in his stomach. The second one. Maybe the third one, he doesn’t know. Was there a third one?

 

 

“ _It means done without being planned or rehearsed. Like your whole existence is fucking impromptu to me, fucker.”_

“ _Only a week to open a dictionary, you’re making progress Little Mo, I’m proud of you.”_

 

 

He’s being dragged on the road. Everything is torn to shreds. His clothes, his skin, his body, his soul. The whole world, his whole life. Every last one of his memories. Everything goes black.

There is no time. There is no space.

The dragging stops, but not the shredding. He’s done for.

“Red, hang in there!”

Annoying voice. Not He Tian’s, he would have recognized He Tian’s voice. It’s another one. It’s far away, too far away in his memory and he’s tired. It’s a playfully annoying voice. He wants to smile, doesn’t know why, can’t do it anyway.

 

Gunshots. A lot of them. Screams.

 

Ah… Who fucking cares anyway? His heart has stopped beating…

 

 

“ _Sometimes I feel like you’re going to kill me.”_

 

 

…and it feels good.


	2. Zhu Wen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My english is still broken, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to notice all the errors I wasn't able to see now that it is posted, even though I checked five times in a row. But I swear it was looking clean!  
> Also, I did post this chapter less than a week after the first one, but please, don't take it as a norm.
> 
> This chapter is kind of a transition, a way for me to set the stage. I hope you still like this one!

 

There is a tower in the middle of the city, next to other towers in the middle of the city. Although they’re designed to be different from one another, at the end of the day, they all look the same. Glass towers, concrete towers, steel towers. One day, they will all fall, but nobody realizes it. Nobody realizes how vain and non-nonsensical what humanity reckon as their greatest achievements really are.

There is a tower in the middle of the city. _Sun & Parker_, a corporation worth billions gathering Chinese fashion brands. People know of those brands, know their names, dig their products, but the name of the Sino-American company remains obscure: the name of an overall trading company, one that is mentioned on the economics channels nobody watches on TV. On the 26th floor of this tower, Zhu Yun-qi’s office can be found. Sixty-eight years on this world, forty-four working for this company as a council member specialized in legislative matters.

A lot of things can be said about Zhu Yun-qi, but nobody would ever dare to query his knowledge of the law. As a matter of fact, knowing it has always been one of the main strengths of the Zhu clan, always finding a way out of the fishnets of justice. It has always been useful to say the least as society is obviously the natural enemy of organized crime, but the law has little to no meaning at all to another clan. This is why Zhu Yun-qi, as head of the family, has always tried his best to maintain good relations with other families, including the He clan, as difficult as they have always been.

Standing here, in the middle of his office, He Tian pointing a gun at his head, Zhu Yun-qi realizes he should have tried, at least a little bit, to develop his fighting skills. The young man doesn’t say a word, but seems to be conflicted. In a way, it reassures the old man. The He clan has always been known to be a family of cold-blooded killers. Maybe this one is still too young. Maybe he still believes the world has something planned for him, something better than killing people for a living. Or maybe the reason this gun is millimeters away from blowing his head off is that he is accused of having taken away what it is that this world had planned for He Tian. There is no way to know other than asking.

“Can I at least know what I’m being accused of?” he asks, trying not to show any fear, probably failing at it.

Well… This question isn't to the young man’s liking apparently, seeing how he is now almost choking him with one hand, sinking the gun under his chin with the other. There is _death_ written all over his face.

“You’re not accused of anything, Mr. Zhu, you’re only being suspected for now” says He Cheng, and well, Zhu Yun-qi must have been really preoccupied with the probability of his imminent death, because he hasn’t seen him enter his office, nor has he heard him. “There’s a sniper in the building across the street. You might want to step back He Tian, or I’ll have him shoot you in the knee.”

Zhu Yun-qi knows a lot about a lot of clans. If there is one thing he knows for sure about He Cheng, it’s that there is nobody in this world he loves more than his brother. Not even his father. He Tian could blow Zhu’s head off by pulling the trigger, He Cheng would not dare to carry out the threat. Still, the hand around his neck pushes him away, and Zhu falls to the ground, head hitting his desk. He Cheng offers a hand to help him up, and Zhu Yun-qi can’t help but think to himself he’s in no place to refuse it.

“Should we take a seat?” He Cheng asks, but it sounds like an order. It _is_ an order.

So he does, goes around his desk and sits in his chair, eyes following around the agitated little brother acting like a beast locked in a cage. He Cheng sits in front of him, face impassive and eyes like deep holes boring into his soul.

“Someone was killed. Your name has been thrown out a lot.”

Zhu goes to reply but is cut short.

“It’s no secret that our clans don’t go along well, Mr. Zhu. But it is suspicious to say the least that you would do such a thing. You’re no man of honor but for some reason you don’t seem to go at your enemies’ loved ones. Or rather, you do it with the guarantee of excessive discretion. I wouldn’t call what just happened discrete. I would even go as far as to say it was ostentatious. This is the only reason you are still alive as we speak.”

“Can I ask who it is that I am presumed to have killed?”

He Tian doesn’t seem to like this either. He doesn’t seem to like anything, anyway. There is despair in his anger. He looks like he knows – _thinks_ – Zhu is trying to fool them.

Well… The defense is about to plead not guilty.

“You said _loved one_ _s_. Judging by the look on your brother’s face, I would say this person is one of his. Surely you know I am not stupid enough to have the son of Mr. Jian killed, and I would have heard of his death by now… You are standing well alive in front of me, so it’s not your death I am being accused of. Pardon me for the intrusive researches I did about your whole clan, but I am afraid they led me to say that there are only two other names that truly matter to him. So was it Zhan Zheng Xi, or Mo Guan Shan?”

He Tian comes to a still, eyes shooting bullets at him. He looks like the only thing that keeps him from skinning Zhu alive is the presence of his brother in this room. Youth’s intensity. He Cheng leans back and crosses his legs.

“Either you can answer your own question, which you can’t possibly admit, or you don’t. It’s a pity if you don’t, but I’m afraid, if it’s the case, it’s none of your business. Either way, I think it’s common courtesy to have you be informed that my men are at your mansion right now. I heard your daughter makes some really good chow mein noodles.”

Zhu Yun-qi eyes widen. As much as he wants to snap at the threat and press the button that orders his men, those who are posted around his house, to attack the intruders, he knows he can’t. It would be the beginning of a war he’s not sure of even having chances to win, and he sure doesn’t want to put his children at risk. Besides, even if He Cheng has him cornered, the fact that he is still alive proves that he’s willing to back off once it is proven Zhu Yun-qi’s not guilty. He Cheng’s doubting, knows there is something wrong. This is probably his only way out of this.

“Well, you can tell your men Wen’s mapo tofu is to kill for. By any chance, may I call my daughter? Surely you can understand that with what you’re accusing me of, I fear for her security.”

“Feel free to do so. Put her on speaker phone. We wouldn’t want you to call someone else and cause a war, would we?”

Zhu has always been good when it comes to keeping a straight face, but all illusions are wiped out when he reaches for his phone with shaky hands. Although it looks like a sign of weakness, and it is, He Cheng knows better than looking down on him for it. In front of him, shaking with the fear of a constant death threat above his head, is sitting one of the most intelligent men in the triads. He didn’t earn the place of family’s head with strength, power or charisma. He was one of the few that did it through clever moves. The Zhu clan has way less influence than the He clan, let alone the Jian clan, but it was absolutely nothing before Zhu Yun-qi became head. He never did the dirty work by himself, wouldn’t be able to shoot an already dead man, but if a strong and charismatic man was to show Zhu’s acumen and intelligence, he would be the greatest leader the triads have ever known.

He hears the phone tones, and after a few seconds, a young feminine voice answers the call.

“ _Dad?”_

“Zhu Wen, are you okay?”

“ _Yes I am. They won’t let me call you… I’m fine but…”_

“But?” he asks, shooting He Cheng a dark glare.

“ _But there are three assholes fucking around in the pool, and they fucking destroyed my garden while playing soccer, and there is this brother forcing me to cook for him, it’s seriously annoying. So you tell his fucker of a boss to tell his trash of a slave to back the fuck off. Plus I had a party to attend tonight but they said I couldn’t go out for now. I swear to God if they don’t share the beers I’m sure they have in the trunks of their cars, I’m going to snap. When are they going to stop locking you up anyway?”_

Zhu looks at He Cheng, unsure of the way he should answer after his daughter trashed him without any thought. He doesn’t seem to care though, still impassive. He Tian is now looking at the city through the bay windows of his office. He can only see his back, which he’s glad for: not having a murderous look pointed at him at all times lessens the pressure on him.

“Uh… I’m sure I’ll be able to come back home once I’ll be proven innocent, Bunny.”

“ _And who is going to prove you innocent? Them? They’re only good when it comes to killing people. They’re brain-dead.”_

Once again, Zhu looks up at He Cheng, but nothing comes.

“ _I mean, you’re still alive, so they’re not that stupid, but still. Whatever… Do you think it might get you killed if I slip away?”_

“Well I don’t know, but I would dearly appreciate it if you didn’t try...”

“ _If you say so. You okay?”_

“I’m fine Bunny.”

“ _Li and Jie?”_

“They didn’t tell me about them so I assume they’re fine.” Zhu answers, looking at He Cheng in search of an answer. A slight nod is all he gets from him.

“ _Oh, cool. Well, see you when you come back home. I have to go, my conditioner has been on for way to long and I’m not about to lose volume. Stay strong Dad, love you. I’ll call Li and Jie to tell them you’ve been kidnapped. Hang in there!”_

“Good bye Bunny, I love you too. Tell them not to do anything stupid.” he says, and then realizes his daughter has already hung up on him.

“That’s quite a mouth your daughter’s got on her.” utters He Cheng’s voice, and Zhu can’t help but smile with fondness, but doesn’t reply. He goes on to discuss a completely different matter.

“So you posted four men around her?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer such a question, Mr. Zhu.”

“Of course you can’t. I wouldn’t if I were you. All I want to say is that you might want to at least double it. She’s a smart one. If your men keep making her angry, she’ll be out in the next hour, and since I don’t know what consequences would fall on me then, I would greatly appreciate it if you could make sure she doesn’t manage to leave… You know what? Triple it.”

He Cheng is about to reply, but Zhu cuts him off. First bold move since the beginning of the encounter.

“And tell them to keep away from her garden. For your sake, you should try to keep a good relationship with her.”

Zhu Yun-qi watches as He Cheng’s eyes widen for a second, fully understanding the implications of what the older man is saying. This bad-tempered sixteen years-old girl is to be the next head of the Zhu clan. And since she is, it means she is already learning to manage and already has authority over the different tools her father has at his disposal, which means…

“If your men are still alive, it means my daughter had the presence of mind to tell my men to hold their position.”

…He Cheng has sent his men on a very dangerous field. A field on which soldiers are holding fire thanks to the good will of the very person he’s holding captive.

“It’s a bold move of you to tell me to triple the number of men around her only to tell me yours are already deployed. What if we outnumber them?”

He Cheng knows he still has the upper hand anyway. He has witnessed enough threats in his life to know that this is merely a display of power from the old man’s part.

“This mansion in sitting on my lands, Mr. He. There is a hundred men ready to attack at any time. But even though, I’m in no place to wrangle. Here’s what I offer… I’m sure your men are already all around this floor. I’ll stay here as long as you want me to. It would be kind of you to please provide food, and I would not refuse some good whiskey too. You should go and meet Wen. As I said, she’s a smart one with a very deep-rooted knowledge of the triads. I’m sure she’ll be able to help you find the clan who did this. Please, don’t feel threatened by the idea of a hundred men pointing guns at you without you seeing them. You can rest assure that I’m aware of the fact that killing you would have me and my whole family killed. Once you find your culprits, I’ll ask for a formal apology for threatening to blow my head off, but we’re still not there I’m afraid.”

Zhu’s eyes clashed with He Tian’s, standing by the windows.

“Eat shit.” is the only answer he gets from the young one, before he hears the door of his office being slammed shut.

 

 

For a split second, a flash of light in the distant mountains attracts He Cheng’s attention. Of course, it could be anything, but he knows it comes from the sun reflecting on the telescopic sight of one of the many sniper rifles pointed at him at the moment. He also knows that Zhu Yun-qi must have notified them of his arrival at the mansion. The only way he can get killed right now is by showing aggressiveness, and he is not about to kill a teenager while highly doubting her father’s guilt in an incident he doesn’t even really care about. He’s fine for now.

Although long years being active in organized crime has prepared him for about anything, one thing he isn’t suspecting to see while passing the huge entrance of the mansion is a young girl surrounded by three of his men looking absolutely defeated while almost naked.

“It’s been two hours of her fleecing them at poker. They owe her ¥78000, their Armani suits, the cars outside, three dogs, and I’m pretty sure one of them bet his wife at some point. Was generous enough to let them keep their underwear.”

Qiu looks jaded, sitting by himself with a glass of vodka in front of him. He has proven in the past that he isn’t one to look after a teenager. He simply cannot help but feel like some kind of maid. When he finally looks at He Cheng, it’s to remind him this very fact.

“This has nothing to do with Mr. Jian’s business. I shouldn’t even be here. As far as I know, you’re no boss of mine.”

“You’re doing me a favor, is all. As a friend.”

“Like hell I am.”

He Cheng doesn’t answer and steps further in the living room.

“Hello Miss Zhu.”

“Care to pay off your slaves’ debts?”

Boring his eyes into hers, he makes her understand that his presence here is no game.

“I was told by your father that you could possibly have information concerning an incident of ours.”

“Mo Guan Shan’s death?” is all she answers, overly focusing on her cards.

He doesn’t like how much this clan seems to know already but remains unfazed. After all, he is part of the triads. By now, he has learned that people do know things they shouldn’t be aware of. Either you silence them, or you use it to your advantage.

“Are you willing to help?” he asks in this way that makes questions sound like orders.

Even if it’s rare, he’s used to people not being intimidated by him, by his ways and his authority, but most of the time, it has to do with the high level of influence of the people he's using it on. Right now though, he knows her boldness is driven by teenage years’ spirit of rebellion.

“What’s in it for me?” she has the nerves to ask, and He Cheng hears Qiu chuckle to himself.

“I’m sure your father would be happy to know his freedom is not enough of a reward for you to help.”

“The condition to my father’s freedom is his innocence. Whether I help or not, the outcome will be the same. You know it as much as I do, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, asking help to your suspect’s daughter to find the true culprit.”

So she _is_ a smart one.

“What is it that you want, then?”

The girl gets up, tossing her cards aside, and walks towards the open bay window leading to the backyard.

“Let’s discuss that outside.”

He Cheng raises an eyebrow. Long years of being engaged in a dangerous “profession” taught him that when someone asks you to follow them outside, more often than not, they’re just trying to have you walk to your death, a death that is brought to you by your own idiocy, and by the perfect angle on yourself you are willingly offering the sniper waiting to shoot you. Even though he doesn’t believe she’s going to do so, getting him in the backyard would be the perfect occasion. But no matter how much he thinks of it, she has nothing to earn from it.

“Oh come on, do you really think I’m that dumb, fucker?” is her way to answer his concerns.

“I’ve been in this kind of situation more than once, and it rarely ends up with a happy ending. Except for me.”

“Yeah, no shit.” she says under her breath while rolling her eyes. “Look, I just want you to see what your slaves did to my garden so you can pay for a fucking gardener. Getting you killed would for sure get me killed, and seeing how I’m still a virgin, I’m not about to die now.”

“Nobody needs to know about this shit!” he hears Qiu shouting behind.

He Cheng manages to catch the tired sigh that was about to leave him and follows her into the backyard. Except for his moody brother, he never had to deal with a teenager. She sure is a brat, but brats always have this strange code of honor. One that say they’re gonna be bitches to anybody, but still honest bitches.

“I was not flirting with you when I said I was a virgin.”

“I can have your father killed by snapping my fingers, I’m sure you’re not.”

She ignores him completely.

“I have my eyes on this boy at school... I was supposed to see him at the party tonight, but shit happened. I mean… _you_ happened. Anyway, problem is, my brother is kind of a dick, I’m sure you can relate, and he would probably break both of his legs if he was just to look at me... We’re here.”

He Cheng has never been one to love flowers, so what he has under his eyes doesn’t really impress him, but he guesses that a lot of people would be. A lot of flowers, fruit trees, a greenhouse a bit further. He sees a patch of flowers that has obviously been stepped on, and guesses that’s what she meant by the destroying of her garden by his “slaves”. She sits on a bench in the middle of this bucolic place, and He Cheng on the second one, in front of her.

“So, Mo Guan Shan’s death.”

“How did you know?”

“Well, you’re still alive, I would have known by now if Mr. Jian’s son was dead, and I’m pretty sure I would have known if Zhan Zi Qian’s brother was dead, which only leave the redhead. Although I would argue that he’s probably not really dead seeing how your brother didn’t instantly kill my father. If he was able to show restraint and relative clear-headedness, it means he’s probably still fueling on some type of hope. So if I had to take a guess, I’d say Mo Guan Shan is probably in a coma. Do you have cigarettes?”

Is he really internally speculating about the pros and the cons of giving a cigarette to a teenager right now? Well yes, as a matter of fact he is. After a few seconds, he decides this brat is obviously going to make it hard for him if he refuses, so he gives up. He’s not one to care for other people lungs anyway. He watches her light it, take a puff, and go back to what she was saying.

“If he ends up dying, it won’t be a lie, and if he wakes up, you’re probably going to give him a new identity to prevent this kind of things to happen ever again or whatever. Which he probably won’t like at all. The guy’s been ripped off his whole life, I highly doubt he would appreciate you taking his name away. Let’s be honest, it’s pretty much the only thing that never left him, and you’ve got no other choice than stealing it since it’s now going to be common knowledge that Mo Guan Shan happens to be He Tian's greatest weakness. If he was to die, He Tian would probably lose it, and it would be the beginning of an underground war that would greatly weaken your clan. We both know he would at best attack anybody he slightly suspects. Worst case scenario, he kills them all. But erasing the redhead’s name is not a smart move if you want my opinion. If I were you, I would pray for him to never wake up while still staying alive, because waking up to find out his name has been taken away from him, he’s going to get mad, and a mad puppy is a puppy that runs away. But when the puppy’s fake death, which is going to be proven as a lie at some point by the way, cause truth always comes around… So when this fake death shakes the normally unshakable triads to that extent, you can be sure someone else is going to be willing to use it. That’s how you make a bomb out of a puppy. Not really convenient when you know defusing this bomb would trigger your walking bomb of a brother.”

 

_What the fuck?_

 

The only reason He Cheng remains impassive while being stunned is the fact that he has been trained his whole life to not show any type of emotion. In what type of world is he living in for a young girl who took great caution about the laying time of her conditioner, spending time planning how she was going to make her crush fall in love with her, to know everything about an attempted murder on a nobody that happened to matter to one of the sons of one of the most powerful clan of the Chinese mafia?

“Funny thing about this all is… This would be… This would be so fucking smart if it wasn’t so obviously unplanned. Somewhere out there, some people are shaking with the fear of you ever finding out they’re the culprits while not knowing how cornered they’ve got you. Funniest thing though, _you_ don’t even know how cornered you are. Sure, you would win the war against us if we were to actually fight, but how long before all the smaller clans start to feel like you’re a threat? We both know if He Tian snaps, it’s the end of you. You might as well kill him and get it over with.”

“Careful now,” he says, somber.

For the first time, she seems to flinch a little, looking at him and then at the mountains in the distance, where she knows her men are posted and ready to shoot. After a few seconds though, she regains her composure.

“Whatever,” she says.

For a moment, they sit there in silence and gauge each other. She doesn’t seem as full of confidence as she was a few minutes ago, failing to look at him in the eyes for an extended period of time. Two words had her reminded that even if he shows no aggressiveness, He Cheng is still one of the most dangerous people out there.

He’s the one that breaks the silence.

“You said it was obviously unplanned.”

She shrugs.

“Well… Yeah… Who does that? Displaying how much they fucked up the redhead, and then what..? Logic says with such an ostentatious act, the guilty clan would claim responsibility for it.”

She looks at the cigarette between her fingers, probably contemplating if she should go on or leave it at that. But as her father said, she’s a smart one, and knows she’s in no position to end the conversation here.

“That’s why we sign the box containing the hand of a kidnapped son, that’s why we tag our name on the ground in front of a burning house… Because no threat goes without a name, and everything, _everything_ , from the stabbing to the dragging on the road makes it look like Mo Guan Shan being dropped in front of your club was a threat, only there was no name. If we really were behind this, if we really were that vulgar in our ways, you still would have found a little greeting card with our name in his pocket. But you didn’t, because it was not about you in the first place. It was never about your clan, it was all about the redhead. You want to know what happened? For some reason utterly unrelated to you, they beat him to death until they realize who he is to your brother. Then they shit themselves, because the He clan is a family of trackers. They can’t let the redhead go, what if he says something to you? But you’re still a family of trackers, so even if they kill him, you’re going to find them sooner or later. What’s the only way out of this? Killing him and making a culprit out of someone else. Preferably a clan that doesn’t go along with yours. With Jian Yi and you stabilizing the relations between your family and the Jian family, they’re out, and you pretty much saved Long Ning’s son, so it would seem absolutely absurd that they would do such a thing, seeing how Long Ning has been covering you with gifts for literal months. It only leaves the Zhu clan. We never got along, never agreed, we’re always interfering in each other businesses. It makes sense that we would be used as a scapegoat.”

She stubs out her cigarette, throwing the butt in the destroyed patch of flowers.

“Other than that, I’m no psychic, I don’t know who did it. But I’m pretty sure you’re not looking in the right direction. Stop looking around you, and start looking around the redhead.”

It makes sense. Every last bit of what she said makes sense. He’s been so used to see every little thing being done because of his affiliation to the mafia that he forgot that sometimes, shit happens. It just does. That it could sometimes be utterly unrelated to him, to his brother. Knowing this guy tendency to throw himself in problems, he should have known. Should have guessed by himself.

“You’ll have your gardener," he says. "Also, leave your crush behind, find yourself someone that could break your brother’s legs if necessary.”

This girl could go far. He sees it. With a little bit more of respect, and a little more of acknowledgment of the fact that everybody is not as merciful as He Cheng, she might be able to do something big out of her family. She has the brains of her father, and the charisma of her mother.

“Is that a love confession?”

He ignores her, still gauging her, lost in his thoughts. Yeah, she could make it, and when she does, it might be a good thing to be in each other good books. Maybe it is time to warm up the relations between their families.

“It’s already half past five, you should get ready for your party.”

He watches as her eyes light up with excitement. Good thing teenagers are easy to please. Just let them do what you’ve previously forbidden.

 

 

It was agreed that all men working for He Cheng would be withdrawn from the Zhu property, and that Zhu Yun-qi would be free to leave his office and go wherever he wanted to go to. The only condition was for him to be followed at all times by one of He Cheng’s men until the true culprits were found. If the incident should have drawn apart the two clans more than they already were before, it seemed to have the opposite effect. The fact that for once the He family spent time thinking before taking action had a lot to do with it. This precisely was what kept Zhu Yun-qi alive.

Despite several searches in Red’s flat to find any information of use, nothing of help was found. The neighbors didn’t see or hear anything, nor did they even know the guy. No phone of his was ever found, his internet history consisted of job search sites and porn, with no social media registration whatsoever. The few friends that remained, – Buzzcut and some other guy – holding back their tears in front of Mo Guan Shan's grave – _fake grave_ , not that they would know it – were categorical, Guan Shan had lived a life out of any troubles until the very end.

The only time He Tian had entered Red’s flat, he wasn’t surprised to find himself in an impersonal room. It was neat, no sign of a fight that could indicate a kidnapping. If he didn’t know he had been lying on a bed at his brother’s house for days, plugged in to what seemed to be dozens of machines maintaining him alive, it would have looked like the redhead had simply been erased from the surface of this world.

However, he did find two things that punched him in the guts. The first one was a box thrown out in the trash containing the black studs he had given him back in middle school. The second one was a letter written by Red’s father stating that he had to be stronger than ever now that his mother had passed away.

He left then, went back to his brother’s house, and locked himself in one of the guest rooms, drowning himself in alcohol, smoking himself out with cigarettes, all the while hating himself.

 

 

And so, almost three weeks went by. Many things happened, but Red didn’t remember any of it when he opened two amber-colored eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah... I just gave the minor characters and the OCs their screen time.
> 
> I hope you liked it although it's very different from the first chapter, but it was necessary for the story to take off in the next chapter.
> 
> Please, feel free to tell me what you thought of it!


	3. Hong Kong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this again soooooo many times, so sorry for the wait.
> 
> Thank you a lot for all the love, it means a lot!
> 
> About the chronology: it is very clear in my mind, but I can see how it is not for you: At first, I wanted the flashbacks in the first chapter to be in the original work timestamp, but then I remembered they were only middle schoolers, and I wasn’t comfortable with it so: 
> 
> As it was meant to happen, Jian Yi disappears on the second day of highschool. What happens in the flashbacks in the first chapter happens around two years after Jian Yi’s disappearance, by the end of the second year of highschool (which,in the Chinese educational system is like the fifth year of secondary education if I’m not mistaken, so Junior High for my fellow Americans out there.) He Tian is gone a few weeks after the downfall, so it only leaves Mo And Xixi for the last year of highschool. By the end of it, Zhan Zheng Xi goes to university, and Mo doesn’t, and they kind of lose touch. The story told in present tense is happening two years after the end of highschool, three years after He Tian disappeared, and five years after Jian Yi did. They’re roughly twenty in this story.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this one.

_‘Yeah, right… And then what? They recognize you because you have fucking red hair, they fuck you up again, and then what? You leave this house and you’re fucking dead. We both know it.’_

 

“Fuck you!” Red shouts at the mirror, envisioning He Tian right where he can see his own face.

There’s a naked old man looking at him. He flips him off and hears him grumble when he leaves. Something about that damn disrespectful youth.

There’s no red hair anymore. He ruined one of the many sinks of the public baths with black hair dye. There are tears on his cheeks because he’s not used to wearing contacts. He looks average now. Dull even. He’s so used to standing out, thought it annoyed him, but there he is now, feeling like he’s throwing away the last remaining pieces of his identity. Who would ever call him Red again?

 

_‘I’ll take care of it, Little Mo. I promise.’_

_‘You promise? Would probably mean something if I trusted you.’_

 

Fuck this guy. Fuck all of them.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, looking at his reflection in the mirror. It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no time for Mo Guan Shan anymore. Mo Guan Shan is dead. Only remains Chu Heng, fucking Chu Heng, who the fuck is that even? Who chose this fucking name?

 

 _‘Little Mo, open the door, you need to eat...’_ But see, he didn’t want to eat. It was so obvious it was breaking He Tian, Red half thought of letting himself die just to break him forever. Leaving him empty and dead inside. He could do it. With that end goal, he could get himself to do it. A sweet, sweet victory. _‘Please, Mo…'_ He was surprised He Tian still hadn’t reached the point where he was snapping and hitting the door all angry and shit, shouting things Mo couldn’t understand, didn’t want to understand.

The mafia had a thing for armored doors, all he had to do was wander around until he found one, and then use it as a huge ‘fuck you’ to all those fuckers acting like they cared. Even He Tian’s brother had tried to get him out of this room. Probably because of the shitload of cash there was in there. All threatening and shit. What a family. Shit family.

At least they had one.

 _‘I’m sorry, Little Mo. I am.’_ It didn’t sound right. Maybe because he never heard him properly apologize before. Took everything for granted, thought if he was here to patch the wounds he’d made himself, there was nothing to complain about. If he was the repairer of the ruin he’d made, Mo couldn’t say shit. It had always worked like that. Sometimes, it had even felt like He Tian had been waiting for a thank-you afterwards. Like hell he would have said it. And now He Tian was desperate to fix him, so desperate to do so because every minute Red refused to let his savior's fingers touch him, He Tian had to remember how he was the cause of it all. He couldn’t go straight to the part where he thought of himself as a hero, no. No no no. He had to go through the self-loathing. Had to fully take in what he was the cause of. The wrecked hand, the torn skin, the ripped off nails, the stabbed, fucked up, shredded, ruined body. The erased identity. The shattered mind. At least he didn’t have to see it anymore. But Red… Red had to live with it. Had to live through the disgust, had to hear them all tell him it was all going to fade away. No. Everything would leave a scar. One day, the blood, the pus, the tears, everything that felt sticky and moist and damp, it would all be gone, but there would still be distinct traces of it all to remind him. They would leave scars.

And Red knew that in the middle of all of He Tian’s faults, he was putting the blame on him for something he had nothing to do with, because it was easier this way, because he needed to be angry at someone, and he hated He Tian so much already, why wouldn’t he put that on him too? Still, it was not like He Tian had anything to do with his mother’s death. He wasn’t the one that made him forget it even happened when he woke up. If anything, he was the one who took it on him to tell him. _Your mother died, Red. I’m sorry. You must have forgotten…_ Didn’t even try to make it pretty. He didn’t remember the death of his mother, but it did ring a bell. _Oh, right. She’s dead_. He Tian stood his ground when Red hit him. Not to demonstrate strength, it didn’t seem like it. It almost felt like he took the punches without making one step back because he didn’t want Red to move around too much. Because he wanted to take it, too.

He took the ‘I-hate-you’s too.

_‘Please, at least talk to me. Say something.’_

Red didn’t even think before he heard himself say the most hurtful thing he could think of.

_‘I wish you were fucking dead.’_

_Took him long enough_ , Red thought, hearing He Tian unleash his anger against the door.

 

So there he is, naked in public baths seeming quite unsanitary, looking at the ceiling wondering what the fuck he’s going to do from now on. He’s got the money. Hell, Jian Yi had been more than generous, and since Mo Guan Shan was gone, since they all took his name away from him, what point was there in following the principles Mo Guan Shan had followed his whole shitty life? So he didn’t refuse the bag of money, he took it, looked inside, and said ‘That’s all?’

Must have sounded like a giant ‘Fuck you’ to the blond, but then again, Red can’t say it wasn’t. And if He Tian had been the one handing him the bag, he would have said ‘Double that’. Probably would have spat in his face too.

“What happened to you?” comes a little voice next to Red.

A kid, looking curious, eyes on the scars and healing wounds all over Red’s body. Looks like he’s twelve or something. For a moment, Red wants to answer with some generic bullshit all those fuckers from Hollywood say in their blockbusters, like “Life” or “Nothing, don’t worry” or shit like that, but he’s never been into acting.

“Some guys beat me up, stabbed me and then dragged me on the road because they were afraid of some guy I jerked off years ago.”

“But you’re a dude…”

“Yeah, and?”

The kid shrugs. There’s a silence, and it’s better this way, because Mo’s not in the mood to debate with a kid about how he likes himself some dick once in a while. But then the kid talks again, and he’s not about to listen to a brat telling him two men shouldn’t fuck, and he really wants to tell him that really, dicks and pussies are all the same to him, that he likes them all cause at least they get him to think about anything else than He Tian, and that in consequence, he’s ready to follow the kid home and make him a new brother if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut. The kid’s too fast, though.

“What did he say, the guy?”

“What guy?”

“Well you know… The guy you…”

“Said he was going to behead them with a butter knife.”

“Oh.” the kid says, as if Mo just told him it was going to rain.

Red thinks the conversation is finally over, but then the kid leans back, looking at the ceiling too.

“He must really love you…” he says.

 

The lighter flicked open, lighting the end of the cigarette between Red’s lips. He looked like an exhausted bloody mess. Without the bandages, he stank. Stank of those death stains all over his body. Pus. He hated himself. Disgusted himself. Wanted to throw up when he couldn’t ignore the smell following him around everywhere anymore. They all said they couldn’t smell shit. Well he did. He did, and it had him sickened.

If he disgusted He Tian, he didn’t show any sign of it, cautiously putting the lighter back in his pocket before he began to wash him with a wet towel. He had never seen such a focused expression on his face before. And of course… Of course Red had to feel the anger slowly building inside of him. Of course. Because he was fucking naked and disgusting in front of He Tian, and he felt like they took his dignity too, if they hadn’t had enough already. That was not what was supposed to happen. Him naked in front of He Tian shouldn’t look anything like this pathetic scene he’s the main character of.

 _“Can you lift your left arm?”_ he heard He Tian ask, and he didn’t say anything back, said everything with his eyes.

 _Take a fat guess, asshole_.

So He Tian lifted his arm himself, and went back to washing Red, silent. He went over every bit of his body, more cautious than he had ever been, cleaning, disinfecting the wounds, putting healing balm and new bandages over it, and Red didn’t know at what point he had started to cry. He didn’t realize it by himself anyway. He Tian cold voice made him.

 _“Stop crying,”_ he said.

Icy, commanding, although he had no right to be.

Red couldn’t help the multiplying of the tears, he hated it. It was shame, anger, despair.

Sorrow.

_“Stop fucking crying Red, or I’ll give you a reason to.”_

He heard He Tian’s nose snap under his fist – the right one, couldn’t even dream of lifting the left one – and in the back of his mind, he knew there was no fucking chance it could have landed this perfectly without He Tian being willing to let it happen. But he didn’t give a shit. He looked as He Tian’s eyes were slowly filling with tears, and yeah, sure, it was almost sure the only reason he was crying was because Red had hit the lachrymal duct, but he still felt some of the frustration weighting on him leaving when he saw it, when he saw the blood running out of his nose.

 _“You still hit like shit.”_ He Tian said.

Everything that came after, Red would only have blurry memories of it. The way he threw himself at He Tian, the way they stumbled and how He Tian winced when his head hit the tiles. How Red’s body hurt and was begging for him to stop when he started to land punch after punch on He Tian’s face.

How He Tian didn’t make a move, didn’t try for one minute to stop him.

All blurry.

One thing he did remember clearly was what He Tian said when Red stopped out of exhaustion.

_“Are you holding back, Little Mo?”_

And there he was with his hand on He Tian neck, pushing all of his weight on it to suffocate him, to fucking kill him. And He Tian didn’t move, didn’t try to get out. Mo looked as his face went through the red spectrum, from the lightest pink to a disturbing purple. It went on for what seemed an eternity, and then a hand calmly laid on his knee, giving it the slightest squeeze.

 _You should stop now_ , it seemed to say.

And as he let go, He Tian taking the biggest breath of air he could, Red felt himself break down. Heard himself cry, and scream. Felt himself trembling, collapsing on He Tian.

_“One day it will all be over, Little Mo.”_

He Tian had always been a good liar.

 

Of course, he can’t help but think he was dumb to think it could have been this easy. There are three black cars stopping in front of the public baths when he leaves, and he doesn’t have it in him to run. He’s fucking tired. Thinks there are only two ways this could go. Either He Tian has already found him and is going to bring him back to his brother’s house, or some guys already found out he’s not really dead and are here to end him.

 _Make it the latter, please_.

Mean-looking guys all around, but they don’t seem aggressive. So he thinks it’s He Tian, it must be, but it’s not. There’s a girl coming out of one of the cars, an ice cream in her hand. She looks at him with a curious expression, and it’s just plain annoying.

“Black suits you.” she says.

“And who the fuck are you?”

“You want some ice cream? There’s a park nearby, we could talk.”

“What the fuck?”

“You know… A park… Where there is a lot of people so it gives you the assurance that we’re not going to kidnap you… You really are shit at this.”

And so there he is, sitting on a bench with a chocolate ice cream in his hand next to a teenager, having to bear with the mean looks people give him because he looks too old to date such a young girl.

“So, let’s get straight to the point. I want you out of this city. You’re not good for my business. You’re not good for anybody’s business, really… You’re a pain.”

“What the fuck are you ta-”

“Are you even aware of the war you’ve almost created? I mean not really, just… Oh well. You know, I reviewed all of my options. There were three. Either you die, which… Well we’ve seen how this goes and I’m not about to get what’s coming for those who did this to you. Or we kill He Tian. But He Cheng is really scary, though I do think I could come up with a plan that would get us out of the radar, but I don’t want to take the risk. So the only option left is you leaving. I was really hoping you would slip off by yourself, which you did, so thanks for the hand. What do you think of Hong Kong?”

“Wha-”

“’Cause my sister has a restaurant there, and she’s looking for a cook that can actually not lose his shit anytime he hears a gunshot. Hong Kong is kinda nice, for real. Like really good. And with the amount of money in your bag, you can do pretty much anything.”

“How do you know about-”

“Jian Yi’s in it too. He wanted you out of troubles, so we made a deal. You work at my sister’s restaurant for a while, so my family can protect you until nobody gives a shit about Mo Guan Shan anymore, and once it’s done, you’re free to live as you want to. The only thing we ask from you is to not ever come back here again, and to never contact He Tian or anybody who knows you as Mo Guan Shan.”

For the very first time, a silence that allows Red to make a complete sentence sets.

“You want me to throw my whole life away? Like it was all a dream?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“My mother is buried here.”

“I mean… We could exhume her but-”

“Fuck off.”

“I don’t know if they told you, but your father has been notified that you were dead by the way.”

He lets the ice cream fall down, and a dog runs towards it but its master keeps him on check with its leash.

“Why would you do this?”

“Well, Mo Guan Shan is dead isn’t he? He Cheng got some inmates that work for him to check on him if I’m not mistaken.”

So this is it? Mo Guan Shan is dead? There’s nobody here willing to see him live on?

There’s a voice in the back of his head screaming that there is someone.

“There’s nothing for you, here. There are only useless fights, pain, and death. Take the offer, redhead.”

It screams it continuously. His name.

 _He Tian. He Tian. He Tian_.

 

He hadn’t meant for this to happen. He just needed some sleep, but he couldn’t, and he was desperate to get it, and his mind kept reminding him that his mother was dead, that he wasn’t anything anymore, that he was more of a living corpse than anything else.

He could do everything by himself now. There was no blood anymore. No pus. The wounds had closed. Could lift his left arm, could move his fingers. And his skin was rough all over, but it didn’t hurt anymore. It itched, sometimes, but it was fine. He could do everything by himself. Eating, washing, walking. Everything but sleeping.

So He Tian helped.

As he did with the eating, the washing, the walking. Did it ignoring the insults and the hateful silences.

And it was innocent at first. He just was there. And the fact that Red was not alone helped him to get a few minutes a sleep once in a while, but it was not enough. And then He Tian began to lay beside him, began to run his hand in his hair while playing on his phone. Once again, he just was there, but with the physical closeness, he felt more present, and so the few minutes became an hour, sometimes two.

And then, one day, because he was exhausted, because he just wanted a long, long night of sleep, he heard himself say _‘Just get me off already.’_ Everybody knew orgasms were the best way to fall asleep easily, and he sure wasn’t going to jerk himself off with how rough the skin of his hands was feeling. He was not about to bruise one of the only intact part of his body, and certainly not his dick.

So He Tian obliged. He did this night, and the one that followed, and all the other ones after that. He got him off, innovating each fucking time.

And he hadn’t meant for this to ever happen, just wanted some fucking sleep. That’s all he wanted, really. Yeah. Nothing more. He never wanted anything more… right? Cause He Tian was balls deep inside of him, and it felt so right he felt like the end-goal had never really been to get some sleep. Felt like he made He Tian give him what he had craved for years. And He Tian was mumbling some incoherent praises, so Red told him to shut the fuck up, but all he got back was a _‘You’re so good’_ and when he met his eyes, he saw what he had seen once in the reflection of an elevator’s mirror: complete and utter adoration. So he let He Tian moan whatever bullshit came to his mind, and it didn’t matter anymore, because it all felt so right. And it all started to get harder, and faster and He Tian looked like a mess. Like a hungry mess, who wouldn’t stop fucking into him for the sake of his life, but then the hungry eyes drifted to his lips, and for some reason, it got Red back on the ground.

 _“Don’t even think about it,”_ he warned.

They went on, stopped looking at each other. It became a quiet and sad fuck. They came. He Tian left. He always stayed.

Red didn’t manage to sleep after that. All of this for nothing.

He Tian stopped helping after that night.

 

The streets are busy, as always. Head against the window of the car, he just looks at the strangers walking around, busy with their lives and whatever bullshit they are going through. It makes him envious.

“Here’s your new ID, and your new phone. We opened a bank account for you. Well, for Chu Heng. There’s the exact amount of money there is in this bag on it, so leave the bag here. Here’s your credit card. My sister will be waiting for you in Hong Kong. She’s kind of a bitch, but you’ll probably get used to it.”

Red doesn’t say anything. Thinks of how he didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody. Thinks of how he doesn’t remember his goodbye to his mother. Maybe that bag at Red’s feet was Jian Yi’s goodbye. He even gave it to him with that shit smile of his he hadn’t seen for five years. The trying-to-be-reassuring smile.

“You know He Tian’s going to look for me, right?”

“He’s already looking for you. He’s at the public baths right now.”

Red turns to look at the girl, typing something on her phone. Instructions? Orders? She seems too young to be in the position she’s in.

“He’ll find me.”

“Do you want him to?”

His heart is not aching. It’s not.

She puts her phone on the seat between them, and sighs.

“To put it shortly, we own Hong Kong, Red. He can’t find the one guy who doesn’t want to be found in the middle of seven millions people. If the He clan is specialized in tracking, we’re specialized in hiding.”

Red shrugs and goes back to looking at people on the street.

And his heart is definitely not aching.

 

_‘I lied, Red. I don’t want you to try. I want you to trust me.’_

 

“Can you…?” he turns to the girl, hesitating.

Can’t get himself to get out of the car and walk towards the entrance of the airport. Not yet.

 

_‘You don’t think I tried? You know, sometimes you manage to make yourself look like someone who’s trustworthy, and then you ruin it all.’_

 

“Can I what?”

“Give money to my neighbor's daughter for her to keep my mother’s grave clean. Don’t do it in front of her mother, though. She’s a bitch, she would take it.”

She glances towards the rear-view mirror where her eyes lock with her driver/subordinate/whatever-the-fuck-is-this-guy’s eyes.

“I’ll make sure to do so as soon as possible, Ma’am.” he says, as if Red doesn’t exist.

He doesn't exist anymore, does he?

 

The guy on TV looked like a generic handsome actor. Boringly beautiful. And then he opened his mouth, and what he had to say was as generic as the rest of this fucking generic movie.

‘I would begin a thousand wars to see you smile.’

Somehow, He Tian’s voice echoes in his mind.

‘ _I’m going to murder them all, Little Mo. I’m going to slash them all open, and I’m going to laugh, and I’m going to fucking love it, do you hear me? It’s fine if you hate me after that. I’ll kill them all just to make you happy.'_

Twisted.

He turned off the TV, heart beating way too fast.

 

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Then leave already, I have a date in half an hour.”

 

_“Did you fuck She Li?”_

_“What’s it to you?”_

_“Everything. It’s everything to me.”_

_“Well then yes, I fucked him.”_

 

It just mixes with the rest of the noise of the airport at first, so Red doesn’t hear it. But then it comes closer and closer, and all the people around him, behind the boarding gates, turn around to look at the fucker shouting their direction.

He Tian.

His voice sounds so broken, but Mo doesn’t dare to look at him, ‘cause it sounds so broken, he’s sure he’s hearing tears in it too. Not the fake tears induced by a good punch. Real tears. Red knows he’s breaking his heart. Has it as broken as he has always wanted it, during all this time, continuously, but now it is broken, and Red hates it.

“Please, don’t go! Please…!”

 

_“Did you kiss him?”_

_“What?”_

_“Fucking She Li, did it mean something to you? Did you kiss him?”_

_You’ve never let me kiss you_ , is what he wanted to say.

 _“Yes I did.”_ Red said.

 

“Look at me! Mo, look at me!”

But if he looks at him, he might not go, right? And maybe if he goes to Hong Kong, there will be no Mo Guan Shan anymore, but there will be a new life, a fresh start, and he needs it. She sure is a bitch, but she was right when she said there is nothing for him here. Nothing for him anymore. It is merely the place Mo Guan Shan died in. The place everything ended in. To get the aching in his chest to disappear, he just has to forget it’s also the place in which everything began.

He doesn’t know why he turns to look at He Tian, because it’s obviously not helping the part where he tries to forget whatever he needs to forget, but the first pair of eyes he meets isn’t He Tian’s. It’s He Cheng's, dragging his brother on the ground towards the entrance. It says ‘Don’t you fucking dare come back. Don’t you dare not go.’ It says everybody is part of this deal that has been made between clans about him, except for He Tian, trying to break his brother’s arm. Security is all around them, ‘cause He Tian is acting like a maniac.

And he’s crying too.

And Mo only realizes he’s walking toward him when a hand grips his shoulder and makes him turn around.

“Whether you believe it or not, this guy is going to get you killed if you stay by his side.”

On the throat of the guy escorting him towards the plane, there’s a tattoo of a monkey, similar to the one he’s seen on the driver of the brat shipping him to Hong Kong. He knows the guy is also from the mafia, probably from her clan, and he doesn’t want to fight anyway.

So he ignores the many tears flooding his eyes, and is ready to ignore He Tian’s screams with music and earbuds but then he hears him, and although it makes sense, it still has him shaken up, though he would never admit it.

 

_“Why does it matter to you anyway?”_

_“You know why…”_

 

“I love you!” he hears, and though it comes from really far away, he knows it’s what he heard because the monkey guy tenses a bit and pressures him to walk even faster. Thinks he’s going to free himself from his hand and run back to He Tian.

He would have done it, months ago. Would have come back to him without a second thought, and then would have played it cool by insulting him every five seconds, by voicing his anger towards him since he left, and thinking his happiness towards him since he came back.

Well, bad timing.

“I fucking love you, you don’t get to leave!” he hears this time.

_You didn’t get to, you still did._

“I love you!” he thinks he hears again, but he’s so far away now, his brain might just be playing tricks.

 

A radiant line through the window. A radiant line called Hong Kong.

“I know” he mutters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not so sure about this one, but I really hope you liked it anyway.
> 
> Tell me what you thought of it if you feel like it!


	4. Moses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, so just a reminder : past tense=flashbacks, present tense=present time.

_“Is that a lollipop or a cigarette?”_ Guan Shan asked, and as he felt it – deep, intense frustration – He Tian wondered if that was the problem. If him wanting all of Red’s attention was the problem. If his fascination – or was it obsession? – was what dragged Guan Shan to pull away. But the snake was biting its own tail: the more he pulled away, the more obsessed He Tian was growing. And it just kept going, obsession, pulling away. Pulling away, obsession. And surely this wasn’t healthy. It just wasn’t, if the dark rings under his eyes were any indicator. How many hours of sleepless nights had he been through those past three weeks? Sleepless nights spent craving someone who was hopelessly pulling away no matter what, even though he worked on himself, even went to see a shrink to keep his anger issues on check. Only once because the guy was asking way too many damn questions, but he still did. How many sleepless nights spent looking at Red’s photos, tracing the line of his frown with his forefinger, the line of his lips with his thumb? Yeah sure, he might have spent some of those hours jerking off to the thought of Guan Shan finally surrendering. The usual stuff, but by the end of it, the simple thought of a kiss with the slightest tongue action was enough to get him off. And if anything, that one session with the shrink might have worked, cause He Tian was able to bear with Guan Shan smile – that one smile he was never able to elicit from him, not even when he tried his best – at Buzzcut of all people. Somehow, as he was standing there, next to Guan Shan who would not look at him for the sake of his life, Jian Yi’s voice echoed in his mind. _‘Maybe if you just tried to ride the wave rather than opening the sea, acting like Moses and shit, you could get on his good side.’_ So for once, he didn’t make it all about himself. For once, he looked at whoever it was that had Red’s attention, brought his fingers to his mouth, and whistled at her. _“Cigarette.”_ he said, and he turned his head back at Guan Shan so fast when he heard him chuckle, heart beating like a hammer in his chest when he saw the smile on Red’s face. Not just a smirk, a full-on smile, all teeth and amusement. He got a grasp as to why he always tried to play Moses. He sure rode this wave, but now the whole thing seemed to be drowning him down.

Next thing he knew, he was giving the slightest bite at Guan Shan’s ear, quickly realizing this wasn’t how you rode the damn wave. So he pulled back, just a bit, just enough for Red not to back off completely. _“I missed you, Little Mo. I missed you so much...”_ he said.

And maybe that was scary, but if he had to die, drowning in Mo Guan Shan surely was the best option.

 

 

It is all too dry. Where is it? How plain was his life before he met the ocean? Breaking its waves, but then letting himself flow with it. Leaving it behind to lurk from far away, watching the tumult of its waves in the horizon, and then seeing it coming at him full force, like a tsunami, coming to get him, coming to bring him down, but still embracing it, not knowing if he was swimming towards the surface or the depths. And now it’s gone, and it’s all too dry. Was he this thirsty before he met him?

He knows Qiu is following him. Does he feel how dry it all feels? Probably not. Just doing his job, as always, like the good dog he is. What is it now? ‘Make sure he doesn’t kill someone’ maybe. Or the good old ‘Make sure he doesn’t kill himself’. He Cheng has a habit of ruining peoples’ lives, so Qiu has to do this kind of work a lot. How is a dead man going to repay his debts?

Does he owe anything to He Cheng? Is that why? That Jian Yi would betray him sure is surprising, but there was always this thought at the back of his mind that reminded him of this possibility. Guan Shan leaving is no surprise though, he was just eager to go from the day he woke up. But He Cheng? His own brother?

Or is he too naive? He did bury his first puppy, after all. Why wouldn’t he bury the second one?

Trust is overrated.

He turns around to make sure Qiu understands he knows he’s following him. They look at each other as he freezes, bringing a hand to the back of his neck. They’re thirty meters apart, they could just walk toward each other, but they don’t. He made clear a few minutes ago he didn’t want anything to do with He Cheng anymore, and it included Qiu. He Tian watches him reach for his phone, and after a few seconds, his own is buzzing in his pocket. He doesn’t want to pick up, but for some reason he still does.

“It’s nothing you can’t fix, kid. Now, you can go around and do stupid shit, just make a call and I’ll be there to help you. But don’t go around and make things irreparable just to get to your brother. You’ll be the one suffering from it.”

He Tian watches as he hangs up, turns around, and leaves. Another buzz of his phone prevents him from watching his back disappear. A text from someone he hasn’t talked to in years.

 _‘I tried to talk him out of it’_ Zheng Xi says. And then, after a few seconds, _‘I’m on your side.’_

 

 

For some time, they just stayed there, in the elevator, catching their breaths, He Tian’s head in the crook of Guan Shan’s neck, bringing the hand he’d been holding to his own sweatshirt to clean it off. Red just let him, watching him with half-closed eyes, watching his every movements in the mirror. How could one be so beautiful? There was no way He Tian would ever come down of that high. As long as Mo Guan Shan stayed by his side, he was never coming down.

He looked beautiful, but he also looked wrecked. He didn’t know if it was the few shots they’d been taking right before they left the party or if it was the aftermath of what they’d done. It probably was both. _‘Hey...’_ He waited for his eyes to meet his. _‘Stay here tonight.”_ he said, but Red tensed up a bit. _‘I’ll sleep on the couch’_ he said immediately. _‘Just stay, ok?’_ It took a few seconds, a rough gulp due to a mouth rendered dry by too much panting, and then _‘Alright.’_ he said, and He Tian felt his heart going back at it. He was never, _never_ , coming down.

He let go of Guan Shan’s waist, taking his hand instead, making him turn around to face him. He knew he should have just led him to his apartment, taken off his shoes and put him in his bed. But Red was looking at him so intensely, detailing his every features, and fuck… There it was. He was looking at him, now. Only him. For once, he was the center of his attention. He wasn’t trying to ignore him, trying to avoid him, trying to hide the fact that he was looking at him. For once, he looked at him the same way He Tian had looked at Guan Shan for years. It was just shameless looking, and then it was bold statement. _‘It broke.’_ he said. _‘What broke?’_ He Tian answered. _‘Dunno. Whatever this is.’_ he said, pointing at all of He Tian. _‘Your charade.’_ His eyes became dreamy, as if he was diving in his own thoughts. And absentmindedly, _‘It was beautiful’_.

And… Oh… It all made sense now. He was in love, that was what it was. Love and obsession. Obsession and love. He just didn’t know which one came from the other. Maybe they both came from the fact that Mo Guan Shan could read him like he was an open book. Maybe it came from the fact that he had never believed in the bullshit facade.

He hadn't thought about it, should have thought about it, but he had just dived in, tried to kiss him, and it all went to shit from there. The moment he tried, it was like they were both awakened from a dream. He felt Guan Shan’s hand pushing him firmly away from him. At first, the laugh He Tian let out was incredulous, but then reality hit him, and it just became fake, sour. _Did you really think he would ever let you embrace him? Of course it was just a mistake, what else could it be?_ It hurt. He felt like dying. Dying right now. He didn’t want a second more of Mo Guan Shan caging his head with his arms, asking what the fuck he’d just done as if He Tian wasn’t there, right in front of him, hearing it all. _Of course you were just a mistake, what else could you be?_ He watched Red look up at the buttons of the elevator, but at this point, he was just hurt, and angry, preventing Guan Shan to reach any of it. _‘Red… Listen to me. If you leave, I’ll make you regret it for a long while…’_ he said, voice low and threatening as Guan Shan was telling him to get the fuck off, trying to knee him in the stomach and failing at it. _‘You’ll regret this Mo, I’ll make sure of it, do you understand? You’ll pay for it! Don’t fucking treat me like this!’_ Somehow, Mo managed to push the button down, and all He Tian could do was threatening, negotiating, apologizing, anything that would make him stay, anything that could make the one person who could see through him not be disgusted by him. Anything. But nothing worked.

And then, it hit him like a train. What if… What if he took something from him? What if he took something from him he wasn’t ready to offer? What if he had… What if… What

_'You didn’t hurt me.’_

 

 

“Hey.”

It is nighttime, no lights in the hall. In the frame of the door, Jian Yi looks like a shadow. He Tian was expecting him to come back eventually, and he knows it’s him, would recognize that posture among thousands, that presence, even when dimmed by shame. That voice… It was shame too. Lower, more hesitant. Rendered difficult to even recognize. It says, _should I even be here?_

“Took you long enough.”

He’s not going to snap. He doesn’t want to. He might. That’s probably why Jian Yi is keeping his distance.

“Look I…” he tries, but he keeps his eyes on the floor, and Jian Yi has never been afraid of He Tian, so why now? Why does he act like he might explode if he was to make the tiniest step forward?

Is it because he destroyed the room they’re in? The room Little Mo stayed in for months? Is it because he waited for his brother to leave town to trash his whole fucking house? Is it because he’s going crazy? He’s going crazy, he knows it. And he always had trouble managing his anger, but he still did it, still kept himself on check. Now, he feels that’s the only thing left of him. Anger. Nighttime makes it somewhat dull, a little bit more bearable, but it is still there. It’s the only thing there.

“Look, you’re not going to believe me anyway, but I didn’t mean to hurt you, ok?”

“You didn’t?”

Jian Yi sighs. He Tian wants to punch him in the face. He’s not going to. Probably.

“You didn’t?” He Tian insists.

Maybe he didn’t mean to, didn’t want to, but he knew he was going to. What’s the difference, really?

“He Tian…”

“Just go.”

He sounds exhausted. He is. It’s been weeks of him trying to find Little Mo. Weeks of him failing.

For a moment, Jian Yi is about to leave, but then he turns back, and he looks angry too.

“He hated your guts for fuck's sake! Let him breathe!”

He says nothing.

And maybe he’s hurting Jian Yi right now, looking at him like a stranger, like a subordinate. Like some guy he wasn’t friends with for more than a decade. But that’s still better than punching him in the face, right?

“You know what? I did you a favor. I did what you couldn’t do. You know as much as I do he would have ended up… I don’t know… Killing hims-”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Killing himself, He Tian. Killing himself. He was miserable. Just an empty shell. He was not the guy you fell in love with, but you just kept treating him as such and you just kept smashing that damn empty shell and look all confused when you saw it begin to crack…”

“They took him away from me!” he shouts, and rises, and Jian Yi flinches. “ _You_ took him away from me!”

He flinches, but still stands his ground, because… What else can he do, now?

“For fuck’s sake, do you even listen to what I’m telling you? You were breaking him!”

“What the fuck do you know about that? Were you the one that fed him? The one that washed him? Put him to sleep? The one who told him his mother was dead? The one who took the punches, and the insults and the blame for everything, for leaving, for not being there when he needed me when I never wanted to leave in the first place? Where were you Jian Yi? Coming in and out, an hour a week, acting like a fucking shrink but who the fuck are you? Who are you to decide if he can stay or if he must leave? Who gave you the right to take him away from me?”

“I’m your frien-”

It’s anti-climactic – he's already broken everything, so the only thing he can do is throw a pillow against the wall and it’s not loud enough. It should have been much louder. Much louder. Loud enough to cover the crack in his voice when he screamed,

“You’re not!”

He knows there are tears dwelling up in Jian Yi’s eyes. He knows for God knows what reason because he’s not looking at his face and there are no sounds. He just knows.

“He Tian, plea-”

“He’s the love of my life, Jian Yi… Just… Go.”

 

 

All joy had been instantly wiped out the moment he had seen him start to panic. Panic when he couldn’t breathe, intubation choking him, panic when he felt it being removed. Panic when he realized he could not move. Panic when he realized he could not speak. He Tian, watched, powerless, Guan Shan’s eyes widen as the doctors were hurrying around him, and then his whole body started to tremble, and his eyes seemed to be looking for something familiar, someone familiar, and so they settled on him, filling up with tears. He watched Guan Shan’s silent cry for help, before he let out what would haunt He Tian’s nightmares until the day he would die. A broken cry, visceral and primal, that sounded like those cries animals let out when they were about to die.

He Tian tried to join him, tried to hold him, wanted to take it all away, take all the pain and make it all disappear, but was pushed out of the room as he heard a doctor tell the nurses to give Guan Shan a 15mg dose of morphine.

 

 

“Maybe… Maybe it’s for the better.” Zhan Xi says.

He Tian snorts.

“Right. Whatever Jian Yi does is for the better. Even when you said you were on my side. Even when he leaves you behind for five fucking years.”

“He didn’t want-”

“Yeah, I know.”

There’s a silence, both He Tian and Zheng Xi in their own minds. He Tian doesn’t think when he says,

“He’s good at making himself the good guy.”

He doesn’t think, because Zheng Xi’s in love with the guy. Still hasn’t admitted it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. A shame, really: He Tian liked his high-school girlfriend. Sure, she did share some traits with Jian Yi, but for the most part, she was just being herself. And then Jian Yi came back, and in a matter of minutes, Zheng Xi ended a four-years relationship. Still, he would not admit to being in love with Jian Yi.

Maybe that’s what they did. He Tian, Jian Yi. Leave for years, leaving people with a chance to build something, and then breaking it all by coming back. Maybe Zheng Xi and Guan Shan were builders, when they were destroyers.

“He’s not.” Zheng Xi answers. “He’s not good, he doesn’t really have… morals, but he’s genuine.”

“Genuine… Is that why you love him?”

“I don’t-”

“’Cause that’s why I love Guan Shan.”

“I know.”

They both look down at their beers. They probably look miserable, He Tian thinks. He doesn’t care.

“You know, I tried to keep in touch.” Zheng Xi says, and He Tian looks up. “With Mo Guan Shan.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. University or not, I was still in this city, it just made sense to me. He was my friend. I guess it just wasn’t the same for him. He didn’t answer my calls most of the time. Would send one-word replies to my texts. He just… From the very first day after graduation, he was already drifting apart.”

“Because you succeeded.”

“What?”

“University. He didn’t want your pity.”

“He was accepted you know. He worked hard. He just didn’t have the money.”

“I know. But money is such a big part of success in Red’s mind.”

“Is that why you were so desperate to give him money?”

“I guess. He deserved to feel it… The thrill of success. But he was right, it’s just not the same when you don’t do it all by yourself.”

“You pitied him.” Zheng Xi states.

“No.”

“You did.”

“Yeah well… Does it matter now?”

“It does. You never quite stopped, right?”

“I did.”

“Then why were you so quick to nurse him?”

He Tian frowns. _Isn’t that clear?_

“It wasn’t pity.”

“Then what was it?”

“Love.”

 

 

It went all blurry, and it went darker and darker. He couldn’t breathe one bit, not at all. It all went darker and darker, just like the hatred in Mo Guan Shan’s eyes. There he had it. That was what he had wanted to know. The amount of hate he had for him. Enough to kill him. Enough to end him. Enough to get him out of his life forever.

He was never swimming toward the surface after all. He just kept going deeper and deeper not realizing his mistake, and now Guan Shan was trying to kill him. He didn’t see anything anymore. His thoughts were going slow if they were even going anywhere. He was about to lose conscience. He was about to die. About to get killed, and he didn’t want to fight it. Was just letting it happen.

_Fuck, I love him so much._

_So much…_

_So…_

_So…_

_Are you going to put that on him too? Your murder?_

It takes all the remaining pieces of his lucidity to lay a hand on Guan Shan's knee, to squeeze it, hoping it would elicit a reaction, no matter what kind of reaction, that would save his life, that would not make Mo Guan Shan a murderer. He still had to protect him, right? Still had to protect him from what he could become, from what he might become, from what he shouldn’t become. A monster. He Tian knew a whole lot about monsters. Too much, maybe. Couldn’t risk Guan Shan ever looking at a mirror and seeing himself as one. So he squeezed, hoping it would work.

It did.

And since there was nothing real he could tell him, he muttered sweet lies for hours.

 

 

“Brother?”

“Hm...”

“Say… Do you really do those things?”

He Tian doesn’t bother turning to the little boy playing with rocks next to him.

“Mom says you’re as mad as the rest of your family. So do you really do those things?”

He Tian slowly breathes out the smoke of his cigarette.

“Mmh… I wonder. Do you think I do?”

The kid shrugs.

“I don’t know. They are not nice things to do… But you’re always pretty nice to me… But you must have done it, because it would be dumb to have everybody think you really did it… Now, everybody is afraid of you.”

_That’s the whole point._

“Do you have friends?” the kid asks.

“Aren’t you my friend?” He Tian answers.

“Friends your age I mean. I’m not that dumb, I know you’re only pretending to have fun with me ‘cause you’re bored.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Friends help each other.”

“Do you need help?”

“Not now, but what if one day I need help, will you help me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because everybody says you did those mean things.”

“Do they say I did it to my friends?”

“So you have friends…”

“I do.”

There’s a silence. He Tian keeps smoking, absentmindedly looking at people walking on the street. The kid keeps playing with rocks of all things.

“Those stories…” he says. “They’re always about what you did to people that pissed you off. I don’t get what kind of things can piss you off. Remember the time I threw up on you? You weren’t mad.”

“I’m not mad when it’s about me.”

“Really?”

“I’m mad when it’s about my friends.”

“So what would you have done if I had thrown up on your friend?”

“I would have laughed.”

“Really?

“You’d need to do way worse to get me to be mad.”

“And if I did way worse, would you do the things everybody say you do?”

“You don’t know what ‘worse’ mean.”

“Of course I know.”

“No you don’t. You’re still not there. I hope you never will. The ‘worse’ you’re talking about, you’ve got to sacrifice your humanity to do it.”

“But then, you’ve got to sacrifice your humanity to do the things they say you do.”

“Do I look human to you?”

“Of course you are.”

“Inside, I mean.”

“Yes. Sometimes you get me ice cream. Mom says people who care for kids and animals have the biggest hearts.”

“So, did I really do those things?”

The kid is still playing with rocks, and neither of them has been looking at the other during this whole conversation, but when He Tian finally looks down at him, he sees the slightest smile on his face.

“I guess not.”

_You guessed wrong._

 

 

 _‘Just get me off already’_ he had said weeks ago, and so He Tian had rode this wave too. He wasn’t going to go this far, he never meant to. He just kept testing the limits of what Guan Shan would accept, but he kept accepting it all, no matter what it was. Sometimes asking for it. And that was all he had always wanted. Mo Guan Shan taking it all. Everything he had to give. It was his, it was always his. His whole life was always his.

He would have liked to say they were making love, but he was the one making love to Guan Shan. He took everything He Tian had to give, but he didn’t reciprocate, and there was a time where that was what He Tian wanted, reciprocation, but they were so far gone at this point, their whole relationship went so far down the hill he would be happy with just a bit of acceptance. Just the slightest bit of contentment with having He Tian holding him. He would have liked to be something else than the only person there.

He was making love to Guan Shan, but he couldn’t quite brush off his craving for reciprocation, and he knew, how would he not, than trying to kiss him was a bad idea, had proven to be a bad idea in the past. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t going to, but how was he supposed to know a simple glance toward his lips would ruin it all?

 _‘Don’t even think about it.’_ Guan Shan said, and it was fine, he was fine, he learned to bear with the hurt it provoked. He did. He stopped moving though, because Guan Shan wasn’t one to half-reject, surely he would want him to leave now, right? But then again, he had changed, and He Tian couldn’t quite grasp this idea, even when he felt Guan Shan’s hips roll against his, his way to tell him to keep going.

And so he did, because it was Red. He hid in the crook of his neck, chasing whatever it was he was chasing – an orgasm, acceptance? – convincing himself that really, he had this, it didn’t hurt this bad. Convincing himself that he wasn’t the most miserable he’d been in his life, fucking Guan Shan for the first time. Cause that was a fuck, right? That was what it was to Red, at least. He even almost managed to convince himself he didn’t want to cry.

_Ah shit, when did I become this bad of a liar?_

 

 

“I found Mo Guan Shan’s phone number.”

He Tian knows, looking at the glint of guilt in Zheng Xi's eyes, that there is more.

“Don’t get mad. I found it months ago.”

He Tian looks at Zheng Xi with incredulous eyes.

“Yeah?”

There’s an awkward silence, and Zheng Xi puts a hand to the back of his neck.

“Yeah… I just… You were angry, kind of… on a rampage I guess and… you would have ruined it all, so I just kept it.”

 _Even though I said I was on your side,_ he almost says. Zheng Xi knows it sounds ridiculous, knows it sounds like betrayal, but he knows why he did it. Knows he did it because he could not let He Tian dive deeper in whatever it was he was drowning in by letting him contact Mo Guan Shan right away. And maybe... Maybe he's starting to understand why Jian Yi did what he did.

He Tian frowns.

“Why is it that people always choose for me?”

“Isn’t that for the better, sometimes?”

“I guess it makes sense you would ask such a question, you wouldn’t know, would you?”

“It’s not about me…”

“Yes it’s about you. It’s about you always ending up by Jian Yi.”

“You don’t get to say that... I haven’t talked to him in months.”

 _And it shows_ He Tian wants to say, pointing at the shadows under Zheng Xi’s eyes, but he doesn’t because he knows how ridiculous it would sound coming from him.

“Can we just skip that part?” Zheng Xi sighs. But then no answer comes, probably because He Tian is as tired as he is, and so he just goes on. “I tracked Zhu Wen, Zhu Yun-qi and Zhu Li’s phone numbers, figured out their phone operator and just went with the assumption they would use the same for Guan Shan. But no Chu Heng was registered, so then again, I went with the assumption that they went with yet another fake name, or that one of them is paying for it, but no other number than theirs was registered under their names. So I just went through all of the numbers under this phone operator by hacking their personal data which means… you know… texts. I used key words. The Mo Guan Shan’s vocabulary. _Chicken dick, chicken shit, dickhead… He Tian_. Three numbers came out of it. Two of them had been active during a month, and the third one had been active for eight days when I found it. He was gone for a little bit more that two months at the time, so I just figured he was changing number every month. I kept tracking those numbers month after month, and there we are...”

He Tian takes the piece of paper and the pink phone Zheng Xi is giving him.

“Your sister’s?” he asks.

“Yeah, an old one. The chances for your phone to be wiretapped are pretty low, but...”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

At the end of the day, even if he despises Jian Yi for taking Guan Shan away from him, he knows part of the reason he did it was to keep him safe. He can't just call him with his own phone.

There’s a silence as He Tian is looking at the line of numbers on the paper.

“Look, I’m sorr-” Zheng Xi tries.

“That’s fine. You’re right, I would have gone on a rampage, I would have ruined it all. I just wish… You didn’t have to give it to me, I just wish you would have told me.”

“You would have done anything to get it.”

“Yeah, whatever. Talk to you later.” He Tian says, going for the door. “And speak to Jian Yi, you look like shit.” he adds, closing the door behind him.

 

 

_“I didn’t fuck up Red if that’s why you’re here. M’not into killing if it’s not necessary. Or if the guy has links with a whole ass family of killers.”_

A trashy pub for a trashy piece of shit. Normal course of things. The clients were trashy, the drinks were trashy, even the fucking air was trashy. Maybe He Tian should have just burnt the whole place down, with the people inside. Especially with the people inside. Especially with She Li inside. Yeah, giving the most painful death to all those motherfuckers looking at him like _he_ was the piece of trash. Half of them were probably beating their wives up for a fucking unwashed plate, and the other half calling their ex-wives bitches because they wouldn’t happily get themselves beaten up and left. The scam of planet Earth. All gathered here this day to drink shit beer diluted with chalky tap water and complain about the unfairness of the world even though they deserved every last bit of the shit coming their way. They were the racist grand-fathers, the pervs borderline sex-offenders uncles, the abusive fathers. _May they all die._

She Li was behind the bar counter wiping a glass, acting like what he just said was the most casual thing ever. _Why was this guy still alive?_

_“But you still were on touch with him.”_

_“Yeah, well, Red, imma right? Eager for money. I had plenty, he had none, so it was just the natural course of things. He did some odd jobs for me.”_

_“What kind of jobs?”_

_“Oh you know, down there, in the basement.”_

He laughed when he saw He Tian’s eyes widen.

_“Relax, I didn’t sell his ass. Fine piece of ass by the way… Was never really into dudes but Red...”_

_“Shut the fuck up.”_

_“Tight and warm, and fuck, you should have heard him moan.”_

In his pocket, He Tian was feeling the edge of his knife with his thumb, contemplating the way he was going to kill She Li, if he was going to slit his throat, if he was going to stab him multiple times starting with places that wouldn’t kill him just for the torture to last longer, if he was going to skin him alive and wake him up everytime he would pass out...

_“Always your name at first, but then I reminded him you left his trash ass behind, and then he would just cry.”_

Sadistic smile.

_“He always told me to keep going though. You really missed out. Always down to get fucked, no matter what…”_

It was gone the moment he saw the combat knife land right between his forefinger and his middle finger. Silence fell in the pub, all eyes on them.

 _“What kind of jobs?”_ He Tian repeated as he saw She Li smile again, this time in a delirious kind of way.

_“You know, he knew you were back in town.”_

_“What. Kind. Of. Jobs.”_

_“Never seen him so pissed off. Well, I couldn’t complain. As it turned out, a pissed off Red was good for my business, so you know… Thank you I guess.”_

She Li watched as He Tian lifted the knife to lend it right in the middle of the back of his hand, and they both look surprised. She Li because he didn’t think He Tian would carry out the threat, He Tian because She Li didn’t even flinch.

_“Basement jobs. Douchebags that pay to fuck up each other. Funny shit. I didn’t make him pay though. He was family. Kinda. I mean… If you fuck your family on a weekly basis.”_

He Tian turned the knife in She Li’s hand, but then again, She Li didn’t even blink.

 _“You’re going to fuck it up,”_ he said. _“I need it.”_

_“A pity.”_

She Li sighed, eyes on his hand, looking annoyed.

_“He would conduct the trials of those who wanted to fight in the pit. Basically, if they could lay three punches on Red in the span a minute and a half, they could fight with the others. Red didn’t fight though. He just did this, and then he went back home. I paid him for it.”_

_“Buzzcut said he wasn’t doing anything shady.”_

_“Yeah, cause Buzzcut is so discerning, right? And Red didn’t have a habit of keeping it all to himself, not at all... Red did fight once though. His mother just died, and news went around that you had been back in town for quite a while, so he needed to let it all out I guess. He did the one on three. Honestly, it was brilliant.”_

_“The one on three?”_

_“Wei Hai!”_ She Li called, and some teenager got up. _“Bring me the DVD n°53.”_

The kid went to some back room and went back with a CD in his hand he gave She Li.

 _“Here you go,”_ She Li said. _“Here’s a one on three. Red’s one on three. I have some other footage if you want, but it’s more like… you know… one on one, with just me and him, and we aren’t really fighting.”_ he finished, looking as He Tian was taking the knife out of his hand. When he looked up at his face though, it was only to be met with a crazed smile that sent shivers down his spine.

_“If I ever even hear about you talking shit about Mo Guan Shan, I’ll have my fun with you, She Li. It seems you don’t feel pain, that’s great, I won’t have to cut your tongue and section your vocal cords. We will play for days, it's going to be great, and that’s fine if you don’t feel any of it, you’ll feel it when your mind breaks.”_

 

The screen of his computer illuminated the dark room he was in. Mo Guan Shan was there, pixelated, lit cigarette between his lips as he was smashing some random guy’s face with his fist. It took him thirty seconds to knock him out. It had been so short his cigarette was still lit when he drew another puff from it, new guy coming into the ring. Bigger than the first one, but looking hesitant. Mo Guan Shan looked for something, something He Tian understood to be an ashtray when he saw him walk towards it, turning his back to his opponent who saw it as an opportunity. Five seconds later, a loud crack, a leg bent backwards, loud screams of agony, and Red looking at him like it was the most boring shit he’d ever witnessed.

He’d changed. He Tian left, and Mo Guan Shan changed. Maybe the Mo Guan Shan he knew would have broken a leg, but he would have shown guilt afterwards. This Mo Guan Shan didn’t.

The third one showed with no hesitation, went on that ring and blew a hit to Red’s face that took his cigarette out of his lips, a couple of teeth out of his mouth, and then he smiled, and it was like he had activated the rampage mode, and He Tian could see, now, how he had changed him during those few years they spent around each other. There was a time when Guan Shan was all screams, and uncontrolled punches coated with insults, and hot-blooded, burning wraths. This was cold fury. Silent, and effective, and terrifying. This... This was what he had left behind, was the only thing he had left Guan Shan with. This screamed He Tian. Only not quite as tall, shoulders not quite as broad, mask not quite as elaborated. And red hair, red eyes, red knucles, red everything, and it screamed He Tian... Only it wasn't.

No matter how fast the other guy tried to punch him, Guan Shan would either dodge or block it, and then land one hell of a punch in the other guy’s face, ribs, stomach, chin, sometimes neck. It took longer for him to knock him out, but he eventually did. He didn’t stop punching though, kept going as the audience was cheering for a guy that was obviously out for blood, that would obviously end up killing his opponent. He watched Red keep going, praying he would stop - but that was fury, and he knew fury, knew to what extent it could lead you, how hard it was to stop when you were caught in its web -  praying he would not murder this guy. He watched for what seemed an eternity before he saw She Li enter the ring, laughing, and circling Mo Guan Shan’s waist with his arms, carrying him out of there while some guy obviously linked to the knocked out, almost dead one was shouting how he would kill Guan Shan given the opportunity.

He Tian zoomed on his face and sent a screenshot to his brother.

 

 

He can call him, but what’s the point? Guan Shan is going to hang up the moment he understands it’s him, right? He’s going to hang up, and then He Tian will try to call him again and again, leaving tons of messages on his voice mail, ending up ruining it even more, and then he’s going to drink, and he’s going to smoke, and he won’t be able to sleep for days and nights and what is he supposed to do?

What would he ask anyway? _Where are you? Do you miss me? Not even a little bit? Do you eat enough? Do you have a place to sleep? Do they care for you? Are they able to protect you? How much better than me are they at it? How much do you hate me? Are you better? Are you happy?_

_Are you happy?_

_Are you really?_

He’s not going to call him.

 

 

 _“I love you!”_ he shouted again, but his voice cracked midway, and Mo Guan Shan didn’t bother turning back this time, and surely he must have broken an arm or two among this dozen security agents too undertrained to fight him. How could they do anything against him? Would they even be able to touch He Cheng without getting knocked out? Couldn’t they see who was the real threat here? He Tian could see. He could see clearly. He could see clearly and was fast enough to land a punch on his nose, feeling it break under the blow, and he felt how relieving it must have been for Little Mo to break his nose back in that bathroom. He went on, willing to destroy him, but felt himself being tackled to the ground, and knew without even looking Qiu was the one who did it, as the good dog he was. _“Calm down, kid.”_ he barked, and He Tian didn’t care anymore at this point, he just looked up at He Cheng, using a tissue to stop the blood coming out of his nose. _“You’re dead to me!”_ he shouted. _“Do you hear me? You’re fucking dead to me!”_ And then he laughed. Laughed like a maniac. And when he stopped, it was only to get to his brother with his words. _“Look at yourself, you’re just like father! What are you waiting for? Go on! Go knock up some woman, do it twice, but don’t fucking forget to ruin her life until she kills herself! Don’t forget that part because you don’t want her to ever witness what kind of monsters her sons have become! Go! Be the absolute piece of shit you were always so eager to be! You managed the first part already! You betrayed your own brother!”_ He shouted it all with a fake smile on his face, and he didn’t remember when was the last time he had seen his brother this beaten. When was the last time he had managed to get to him this much? Better nail the coffin. _“You’re dead to me.”_ he repeated, only this time there was no smile, no laugh, no scream. Just a calm and tearing truth.

He turned his head to the gate, and a sob left him, but he didn’t let anymore leave him. In the end, he hadn’t even been able to watch him leave. Even that, He Cheng had taken away from him. _“Let go of me.”_ He Tian muttered to Qiu. He did. And then he got up, and quietly, ignoring everybody, walked towards the exit. And then when he reached it, he started walking toward that tall glass tower in the distance. And then when he reached it, he started walking toward that bridge in the distance. And then when he reached it, he just kept walking because there was nothing else to do.

He knew Qiu was following him, but he couldn’t bring himself to really care. He didn’t care for anything anymore except for one overwhelming feeling. Dryness. Why did it all feel so dry?

 

 

“Hello?”

For a moment, he can’t bring himself to speak, can’t bring himself to answer, he just stays here, frozen, because there it is, this voice he’s been craving for months. Just there, in the phone he’s holding against his ear. But he can’t bring himself to speak, and there is something so gratifying in hearing Guan Shan say,

“Fucking shit, fuck off He Tian.”

Because he’s able to recognize him even through his silences. But he hears the phone moving, and there’s no way in hell he’s going to let him hang up now, and he can feel panic pool in his guts.

“Wait, Guan Shan!”

A few seconds of silence, and he isn’t sure Guan Shan’s still there, but there are no tones, and he is anxious, and-

“What do you want?” 

“Nothing!” He Tian answers too fast, too eager. “Nothing, I just want to talk to you.”

“I’m not telling you where I am.”

“I know, you don’t have to.”

“You won’t be able to locate me on this phone.”

“That’s not…” He sighs. “I just want to talk to you, Guan Shan. That’s all.”

New silence. Red is reviewing his options. He Tian knows he is. Guan Shan always looks for all the exits when he enters a room. Just in case. 

“They said I couldn't contact you.”

“You’re not contacting me, I am contacting you.”

“… Right.”

“They told you not to… Did you want to call me, Little Mo?”

He listens as the silence settles once again, but Guan Shan doesn’t answer.

“What did you want to talk about?” he says eventually.

“Right… uh… Are you happy?”

_Fuck, no. That's not the right one._

“What?”

Well... “Wherever it is you are, whatever it is that you’re doing, are you happy?”

“What kind of sick game are you playing now, He Tian?”

“I’m not… Do you think this lowly of me?”

“You never asked me if I was happy.”

“Because I knew you were not. Now I’m asking because I don’t know.”

“No, there were a lot of times you didn’t know. Why now?”

“I don’t know Guan Shan. Because I don’t know, and I care for the answer. Something like that.”

“Something like that...” he repeats absentmindedly. And then, “Why would you ask a question you know you're not going to like the answer to?”

Yeah, he figured half-way through the moment he asked. If Guan Shan says yes, it means he doesn’t need He Tian in his life to be happy. If he says no it means he's ruined him even more that he’s figured already.

“I don’t know, I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“So you don’t really care.”

 _Fuck._ “I do. I just… I do care about the answer, I’m just not sure I want to hear it right now.”

Silence.

“Which one would hurt the most?” Guan Shan asks, and it fucking stings because Guan Shan has used this trick multiple times before he left. Finding out whatever it was that would hurt He Tian the most and throwing it at him full force. But still…

“Both.”

He hears him sigh.

“I don’t know He Tian. I just don’t know. I have to go.”

“Wait!”

“What is it now?”

He Tian gulps.

“Do you think we will ever meet again?”

A snort.

“You only disappear when you want to. Each time I’ve tried to get rid of you, you've always found a way to show up.”

“How much of a problem would it be if I showed up now?”

“He Tian…”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“You promise…”

“I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, I just… I won’t, ok?”

And the silence is back, and it’s killing him. He knows why there are so many of them. Guan Shan is measuring the weight of each of his answers. Thinking of each words because he’s sure He Tian is going to use them against him eventually. Not only has he scanned through this room to find all of the exits, but now, he's figuring the shortest and most effective way to get out of here.

“You seem way less on edge than you were when I left.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You still are on edge, though.”

 _Fuck._ Yeah, but he’s always going to be, right? It doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to calm down.

“I am too. I need time.” Guan Shan says.

“How long?”

“For fuck’s sake, He Tian.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’ve got to go.”

“I mean it, I’m sorry. For everything.”

Silence. _Fucking silence._

“I shouldn’t have left.”

 _What?_ He knows it's not right, knows he's not apologizing for leaving and going to Hong Kong, because it can't be, because he would have come back if that was the case. But he's still catching himself wishing that's what it is... 

“That one time, in the elevator. I shouldn’t have left. I’m sorry.”

 _But it's not_. And he wants to tell something, _'_ _don't apologize'_ maybe, and then  _'you shouldn't have to'_ , and then, probably  _'don't apologize for something that has happened centuries ago'_ and  _'please come back'_ and  _'please,_ please _, come back Guan Shan_ _'._ He says none of it. Doesn't have time for it.

“Goodbye He Tian. Don’t call me back.”

_No. No. Not now. Just a little bit… Just a little bit longer._

“Yeah, I won’t, I promise.”

_Why the fuck would you say that? Why the fuck would you say that when you know perfectly well you’ll be dying to call him ag-_

“Bye.”

“I love you.”

He hears the faintest laugh, and then he hears his own heart shattering.

“I know. Bye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry for the wait, I've been busy these last few months. This chapter is my christmas present to you, though, and to be fair, I'm kinda proud of this one. I really really hope you like it!
> 
> Once again, I'm very sorry for all the mistakes I wasn't able to see.
> 
> Happy holidays!


	5. Inexistent

How long had they been lying on the ground? An hour? Two?

Mo Guan Shan had fell into somber silence a while ago, lying there, on top of him, his breathing steady again. He Tian could still feel the pressure he had put on his neck, could still feel his murderous intents on the bump of his Adam’s apple, but at this moment, it almost felt like Mo Guan Shan was finally _tolerating_ him.

“ _You really don’t remember anything?”_

After five minutes of silence, it was clear to He Tian he was not going to get an answer to his question. Mo Guan Shan tolerating him didn’t mean he would speak to him. After twenty minutes, sleepiness had taken over him.

Except he was wrong. Again.

“ _They were two, I think. And then they were three. I don’t remember their faces. I don’t remember their names. I don’t remember why they did it. But they were probably two or three. Sometimes I hear their voices in the back of my head. Sometimes I dream about being chased by shadows. Sometimes two, sometimes three. Most of the time two, and then three.”_

 

 

 

Thousands of kilometers apart, two packages are delivered.

“No fucking way…” Zhu Wen says, eyes on the screen of her computer, dialing her father’s number. He doesn’t answer.

“Fucking shit!” Guan Shan says, eyes on the clock on his bed-table, his asshole of a boss banging on his door. He’s late.

He always answers. But this time he doesn’t. Instinctively, she knows it’s bigger than her. Instinctively, she knows there is no father to call anymore.

He dresses as fast as he can, but doesn’t hear any curses or banging anymore. He knows there’s something wrong.

So she dials He Cheng’s number, ignoring the ringing at her door. She knows this is way more important than a high school crush.

“I’m coming!” he still shouts, but there is only silence for a while.

She knows who did it. They know she knows. That’s why her father doesn’t answer. He’s dead. That’s why He Cheng has to answer. She’ll be dead soon.

“No!” he hears behind the door. “Don't! Run! The window, go through the window, run!”

“Hello?” says He Cheng on the phone.

“What?” says Mo Guan Shan, frozen in place.

Thousands of miles apart, two packages are blowing up.

 

 

 

“ _Hey, Black.”_ Guan Shan was smoking a cigarette in the back alley of the restaurant he worked in when his boss came up to him, a piece of paper in her hand. Hair bleached blond and roots pitch black, tattooed up to the neck, the fact that she was not much of a smiler was more of relief than anything else seeing how fucked up her teeth were. _“Still have five minutes left before I go back.”_ he said. _“You have just as much as I say you have.”_ she answered, obviously annoyed, and then gave him the piece of paper. _“Ever seen this guy?”_ An obviously pissed off guy with the faint trace of an old black eye and a missing tooth. He might have been forty, maybe a bit more judging by his receding hairline and the grayish beard on his face. What really caught his attention though was the background. _“That’s She Li’s bar_.” he said, as a matter of fact, as if she had any idea who She Li was. _“My sister asked me if you knew this guy. So?”_ It didn’t make sense that the sixteen years old girl he’d met would be able to have this photo without help. _“Who gave it to her?”_ he asked. “ _He Cheng”_ she answered, and he snorted. _“So the guy who was so quick to get me out of my hometown is still investigating on my case? Don’t make me laugh.”_ She spat on the ground, and it was obvious she was growing more and more annoyed. _“Don’t play dumb, you know who came around it first. Now do you know this guy or do I have to beat you up to have a fucking answer?”_ He hated Zhu Li. Hated her so fucking much. _“No, I don’t know him._ ” he still answered. _“Thank you for your time fucker. Now go back to work, your break his over.”_

 

 

 

For a while he doesn’t recognize it. He has never heard it before anyway. And then he realizes. The pink phone he’s been conscientiously recharging every couple of days with the hope of Guan Shan calling him one day. This phone is ringing. He stays still on his bed for a moment, dumbfounded, before he runs to the chess of drawers, where the 8-bits version of the opening of some anime he’s never watched is being played as a ringtone. There’s a phone number he’s never seen on the screen, but he knows Mo Guan Shan changes numbers every month, and it’s been seven months since he’s last called him. Since the only time he’s called him. _Seven months, four days, and around ten hours._

There’s no hesitation when he picks up. It’s unlike the only phone call he’s ever made on this phone. He had debated for two hours before finally calling him, but it’s not the same. It’s not. It’s Guan Shan calling him, which either means he wants to talk to him – which He Tian would never be able to deny him, or something bad has happened, and there is this feeling in the depths of his guts that tells him it’s probably the latter.

“Guan Shan?” he says, voice surprisingly steady.

“I need your help.” he hears, and there’s an earthquake in Guan Shan’s throat, and He Tian hasn’t felt such a rush of anxiety since forever.

“What happened?”

“I think… I think she’s dead…”

“Little Mo, what hap–”

“She’s dead, I think. She… She doesn’t breathe…”

And he doesn’t know what has happened, but he knows that this voice doesn’t sound quite like Mo Guan Shan, that something… Something has happened. Something bad. And he’s not going to know what as long as that dead girl is still in the picture, but he needs to know, needs to know that it’s all going to be fine, that he’s going to be fine, and he needs to calm down, calm down fast, regain control, and…

“CPR, Little Mo.”

There’s a muffled sound, and without realizing it, He Tian starts biting the nail of his thumb. He’s never done it before.

“No… I… I just… can’t…”

“Yes you can. I know you can.” he says, because he does.

He Tian knows he needs to call someone, to tell someone something has happened, knows he’s probably not the one Mo Guan Shan should have called. Maybe the Zhu clan’s men, or Jian Yi, or He Cheng, or anybody with the slightest clue of where he is. And maybe… No he is. _He is_ getting a rush of being the one Guan Shan would call when everything goes to shit. Isn’t that what you do when you _trust_ someone? Even just a bit?

“I don’t know, I...”

“Have you checked for responsiveness?”

He hears his voice as if he’s not the one saying the words. They come out by themselves, while he’s busy trying to calm down, trying to tone down the anxiety, and the fear, and something he can’t quite pinpoint. Something he hasn’t felt in ages.

“I wouldn’t tell you she’s dead if she was fucking responsive, you dipshit!”

 _The spirit is still there at least…_ He can work with that. He can work his way through what happened.

“Place her flat on her back, arms at her sides, legs straight, and remove her top.”

“What?”

“Mo Guan Shan.” He’s not even sure he’s hearing it well. It’s a relic from the past. That authoritative tone he sometimes took with Guan Shan back in school, when he needed to feel in control because he just wasn’t. “Gotta clear the chest for the emergency services, plus if it was involved with any type of burns, it might be hurting her right now.” And when he hears Guan Shan say “Fuck. You.”, his way to answer with a control he doesn’t have, He Tian has the silly impression nothing has happened since those days.

But then, “There’s a… There’s an arm in her hands.”

“What?”

“I think… It…” Labored breathing. “She has both of her arms, but there’s an arm in her hands. It’s a man’s, and the… the monkey… I think… I’m not sure… I think it’s her brother’s… and...”

“Just forget it.” Because it all sounds like nonsense to him, and he needs Guan Shan to keep his shit together in order for himself to be able to do so. “You want to save her or not? Flat on her back, arms at her sides, legs straight, get rid of her top.”

 _I still have it_ , he thinks when he hears the thud of the phone being put on the ground, a lot of dull and muffled sounds, something along the line of ‘ _fuck, it burns’_ , and then the distinct sound of a cloth being torn.

“Ok, now lift her chin and–”

“I got it, just shut up already.”

He Tian exhales a silent sigh of relief. _There he is._

He listens to the flows of air coming from Guan Shan performing rescue breathing.

“Thirty compressions?” he asks to be sure.

“Thirty, and then do it all again.” He Tian answers.

He listens as he starts to count to himself, performing CPR on this girl, and maybe it isn’t the best time, but he still needs to know.

“What happened?”

… _twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. “_ An explosion in my building.” _One breath. Two breaths._ “She told me to run, so I’m guessing a bomb, probably.” _One, two, three…_

An explosion. That’s just a word. This doesn’t tell him shit. He thinks, _he’s fine, probably_. Because a bomb is designed to kill. Surely it would have killed him if it was its purpose, so he probably wasn’t the one targeted. _He’s fine, probably_ , but he doesn’t know anything else, how can he come to a conclusion? Why did she tell him to run if he wasn't targeted? How can he say for sure _he’s fine_ when he doesn’t know anything? When was it that he started to lose all control? When did he start to not know anything anymore?

_Twenty-nine…_

“If it was–” he starts, because he has to say something, but Guan Shan wants to say something too.

 _Thirty_. “She must have thrown it down the stairs.” _One breath._ “There’s no facade left down there.” _Two breaths._ “I can hear the people in the street.” _One, two, three…_ The phone beeps for a second. Neither of them care. Broken, “Fuck, she doesn’t wake up!” And then, “I lost count.” The phone beeps again. “Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six…” says He Tian, and then Guan Shan says “… twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” _One breath, two breaths_ , and He Tian’s phone, the real one, is ringing. _One, two, three…_ It’s Jian Yi. He doesn’t let go of the pink phone when he answers the other one.

“Are you the one he’s talking to right now?” Jian Yi asks, and leaves no time for He Tian to answer. “Tell him to go. Now. Zhu Li must have shown him an escape road. Tell him to go.”

“Wake the fuck up!” Guan Shan shouts, on the other phone, and there’s desperation in his voice. “Wake up, please!”

“He Tian! Tell him to go!” Jian Yi’s loosing patience.

“Fuck you Zhu Li! Wake up you little shit!” Mo Guan Shan is, too.

For a second, He Tian doesn’t know what to answer to either one of them. They’re both shouting, and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t get it. What is happening right now?

“He’s trying to save her. Zhu Li. He’s trying to save Zhu Li.” he tells Jian Yi, and there is pure anger in Mo Guan Shan’s voice now. Clear irritation in Jian Yi’s. “There’s no time for that!” he says. “Tell him to fucking run, He Tian, it’s way bigger than us! Leave her behind! Tell him to let–”

He hangs up on him before Jian Yi can finish his sentence, and he doesn’t plan on answering any of the calls to come in the next minutes, because he doesn’t want to hear it. He has heard it way too many times in the past year and a half. He doesn’t want Little Mo to bear with the hurt of hearing it. And maybe he was holding both phones a little too close to each other, maybe Jian Yi was too loud, because Mo Guan Shan says,

“Don’t you dare tell me that, He Tian. Don’t you dare tell me to fucking _let go_.”

He realizes now why Guan Shan has called him of all people. “Not you.” Guan Shan says. He’s not counting anymore. He’s still doing the compressions, but he’s not counting anymore. “You’ve got no right to.” And he’s right. He’s right because He Tian isn’t someone who lets go. He clings, blood-sucking little monster, life-sucking leech, he knows that. And he knows how much of a mistake it could be, but he doesn’t want to tell Mo Guan Shan to let go.

“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” He Tian says.

_One breath, two breaths._

 

 

 

She sighed when she saw He Tian at the door.

“ _Silly me. I actually forgot I was ending with you. Such a fantastic way to finish up my day.”_

“ _That’s uncalled for and unprofessional.”_ he said just to piss her off.

“ _Oh, fuck off He Tian.”_

There was a smug smirk on his face when he laid down on the divan, waiting for her to ask him how he was. She wasn’t taking any of it though, and he lost patience, as he always did.

“ _I’m great, thank you!”_ he ended up saying.

Sometimes, he pitied her. Because she was in her sixties, and seated on the divan, hundreds of men and women living a life of crimes and evil had told her the very things that made them feel guilty. She’d heard it all, she’d seen humanity at its lowest. Sometimes, He Tian wondered if she – the shrink – needed help too. If she sometimes went to a colleague, and went on to tell all the terrible things confessed to her because she couldn’t take anymore of it, felt like she was going to explode. Maybe she kept it to herself, like a curse, like something she should never pass on to anybody. She’d heard so much more than anybody should hear in a lifetime. She had to bear with the pictures they created in her mind, pictures she would never be able to erase. There was no unseeing. She had to bear with the threats – _If you ever tell someone what I just told you… –_ with inhumane threats that went against the very vulnerability they’d just shown, and even knowing the Jian family is protecting you, just how much of it can you take before you break? She had to bear with it all, and He Tian didn’t understand why anybody would do that, so he decided that, as anything related to the Triads, she had never been willing to do it. She just had to.

“ _Right. That’s good.”_ she said.

But that was not how it would usually go. She would lecture him about how lying about how he was feeling wasn’t getting him anywhere. How she was not going to stop this psychiatric follow-up just because he managed to put on a smile and say he’s great. But nothing like this.

“ _I’m retiring.”_ she said.

 _Oh._ So that was why.

“ _That’s good, I guess…”_ he said.

“ _That’s great. I’m glad.”_

But then there was a silence, and He Tian didn’t like silence. It made him feel alone.

“ _So do you want to sit on the divan and talk about your feelings or something?”_

She scoffed, a little smile on her lips. He knew she liked him. Liked him in a motherly type of way. Maybe because his tale was one of love, when theirs were always of death. But then she frowned, and He Tian knew what she was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“ _Save yours–”_ he tried.

“ _You gotta let go, He Tian.”_

He sighed. She sighed too. She was retiring, she was probably never going to see him again, and everything she thought he wasn’t ready to hear, she had to say it now, because he needed to hear it. It was a matter of how much she could say before he left. How much he would let her say.

“ _No, you really gotta let go… You made so much progress, but it’s all wrong… You can’t change for one person, that’s not how this works… If you don’t want to better yourself for yourself, you’re not doing it for the right reason. You know, the people we try to change for, they catch on to us. I’m sure he doesn’t want you to change with him, for him, he wants you to change as a person… If he knows you as much as you told me he does, you know he would see right through this act, right?”_

 

“ _It broke… Whatever this is… Your charade. It was beautiful.”_

 

He got up, fingers running through his hair.

“ _I hope you enjoy your retirement.”_ he said, walking toward the door.

“ _He Tian,”_ she sighed. _“He brings the worse in you._ _You know it. He was there, and then he was gone, and you snapped. There's no evil in letting yourself be vulnerable and attached to someone. There’s no evil in loving someone, but to this extent… There’s no evil in loving him, but the things you’ve done once he was gone were nothing short of evil. That person… He created that person. Your obsession for him created that person. That person who holds the worst of you._ _”_

Looking right back at her, _“He brought the best in the first place.”_

“ _And now you have to bring that back by yourself… For yourself, not anybody else. What you do for yourself, you do for the world. When you change yourself for others… It’s corrupted. It’s bound to fall down. You have to… You… Look, it doesn’t have to be definitive, but right now… I know, to you, it doesn’t sound fair, because you focus on his hurt and dismiss yours but He Tian… You need time to heal…”_

He pushed the palms of his hands against his eyelids as he said,

“ _I’m fine. I’m great.”_

“ _No you’re not.”_ she answered. _“And you deserve to be.”_

When he took his hands out of his face, it was to be met with a tender smile. _Yeah_ , she did have a soft spot for him, even if she knew how much she hurt him every time she said it…

“ _Let go.”_

 

 

 

In front of them, in an abandoned warehouse of an industrial zone in Hong Kong, there’s a line of five cars, Qiu running toward them, and Jian Yi leaning against one of the vehicles. Guan Shan hears Zhu Li tell Qiu to _let go of me you motherfucker_ when he throws her on his shoulder, going back to the line of cars. One of the Zhu clan’s men who came to help him in the sewer tells the others to get in the cars, and Guan Shan is left alone, Jian Yi giving him a little smile he can’t help but soften at. It says _oupsie,_ and _sorry I guess_ , and _friends?_

For a moment, he hesitates to even get in the car. He can’t quite get a grasp of what is happening right now, and nobody can, everybody told him they knew as much as he did, and he’s lost, and he feels weak, and vulnerable, and he just wants to freak out in peace.

“You’re getting in or what?” Jian Yi says.

Guan Shan freezes for a moment, and then, “It’s only me.” Jian Yi adds, before he says, “He Tian’s in Singapore.” because he seems under the impression Guan Shan thinks he’s in this car. “Well, he’s probably in a plane by now, but you know…”

It’s awkward at first. Neither of them knows what to say, they just sit next to each other like strangers. So Guan Shan decides it’s not the time to make it about them, to make it about their friendship, of what’s left of it.

“What the fuck just happened?”

When Jian Yi turns to him, he seems distracted, in his own mind.

“The building blew up.” he says, and Guan Shan bites back sharp words about how it’s precisely the only thing he knows about what happened. Jian Yi must read the irritation in his eyes, because after a few seconds, he goes on. “The Zhu mansion back home blew up too. He Cheng believes Zhu Wen found the culprit for… you know… everything, but she must have been watched or something. There were Zhu Yun-qi remains in the package delivered to the Zhu mansion, along with a bomb obviously. Zhu Jie’s in the one that had been sent to you. The restaurant you work in, blown up too. We think it was targeting Zhu Li, but apparently she was at your place. There were some others but…”

_Nothing that concerns you._

Aching, “Zhu Li’s the only one still alive?”

“No, her little sister is still alive. Her left leg is pretty fucked up, chances are we’re going to have to cut it off. Apart from that and a few burns, she’s fine. Someone shielded the bomb that was sent to her.”

“Shielded?”

“Lied on it to contain it I guess. We still haven’t been able to identify him. We know he was young though. Barely sixteen.”

Barely sixteen, and killed by the mafia. It’s everything he’s been running from, and now, it’s all coming back at him.

“It’s never going to end, is it?” Guan Shan asks, but he doesn’t really want an answer. He already has his answer. No matter what happens, he knows that decades from now, if he’s still alive, his name will still be stamped with He Tian’s name and the no evil monkey.

“Oh, yes it is. This whole thing is coming to an end, Red. That was desperate. Killing you, killing Zhu Wen, it’s making sure nobody would ever be able to make light out of what happened to you. They failed to kill their two main targets. It’s about to end. You’ll be able to come back home.” Jian Yi watches as whatever expression was on Guan Shan’s face is slowly going to crumbles. “Or not.” he adds. “You don’t have to.” He smiles, and Guan Shan knows it’s fake.

“Do I have a choice?” he asks. “The restaurant blew up, you said it yourself.”

“Zhu Li has way more than one restaurant. She loved this one, it was the first one she opened, but I’m sure she’ll be glad to have you by her side wherever she’ll be going once it will all be over.”

Guan Shan can’t help but snort at how ridiculous this sounds.

“Her brother and her father died because of me.”

Jian Yi laughs. “You still do this? Feeling guilty for whatever people are going through? Seeing how hateful you were to He Tian back then, I was sure you went over it, but apparently you didn’t… She’ll be fine. She’ll need you.” And after a moment, “I’m sorry I told He Tian to tell you to leave her behind. I just… I couldn’t…”

_Lose you too._

“He Tian would have killed me if anything had happened to you.”

_Even though he told you not to let go when a bunch of angry underlings from whoever it is that wants you dead were on their way to finish the job._

“That’s fine.” Mo Guan Shan says, because he does understands.

“I didn’t know you were so close. With Zhu Li.”

“There’s nothing between her and me if that’s what you’re implying.”

“That’s your business, Mo Guan Shan.”

“There’s nothing.”

“Ok.” he says. And after a few seconds, “She sure is a lot like He Tian though.”

Guan Shan doesn’t say anything, but he knows Jian Yi’s right. She’s a lot like the old version of He Tian. When he would still intimidate him, and soften when it really mattered. Take whatever he wanted from Guan Shan, but stop when he was about to overdo it. She has that dangerous aura all around her, incredible fighting skills, a gift for snark answers and sexual innuendos. But she just _isn’t_ He Tian. “You sure you’ve never…” Jian Yi says with a little smile.

It takes a while, but eventually, upon seeing how Jian Yi’s not going to let go, Guan Shan answers.

“Fuck no.” he says. And even when Jian Yi smiles as if he knows better to close the conversation, he still feels like he has to add, “She’s my friend. I care for her, I just don’t...”

“Care for her that way. I get it.”

There’s a silence, and Guan Shan should probably be asking where they are going, what they are doing, when it’s all going to end, but what he hears himself ask is far from this.

“How is he?”

Jian Yi smiles. “Look at this, you might just have become emotional, all caring and everything... That's cute...”

“I don’t care.” he says, too fast and blushing. “I just…”

“Want to make conversation? Come on, we both know deep down you do care. After that one time you hit Xixi with a rock, you never really stopped caring.” And after a moment, “He’s fine, I think.”

“You think?”

“We haven’t talked in a year and a half. I get updates through the people we both work with.” And then, Jian Yi rolls his eyes and it’s like the guy can read Guan Shan’s mind. “Don’t feel guilty Redhead. I made a choice he wasn’t happy with, that’s all there is to it.”

Guan Shan can feel the uneasiness in the air, the way Jian Yi’s trying to pretend he isn’t hurt. He must be right. He _does_ care. That’s why he ask, “And Zhan Zheng Xi?” because he knows the mention of the guy never fails to bring Jian Yi’s spirits up, it never failed to do so when he was still around, when they were still in middle school, but how could he know it was going to fail this bad?

“Yeah, we… don’t really talk this much either anymore. You know, he has to study… I.T is… Well it’s demanding, isn’t it?”

Mo Guan Shan sighs. “He’s mad at you too, isn’t he?”

Surrendering, “Yeah.” And after a while, “It’s fine.” Jian Yi says with a smile. “He’ll come back to me some day or another. We always come back to each other. Even when it takes years.”

“Is it about...”

“You? Not really. He’s not He Tian, you’re not the very core of the problem. When it come to Xixi, you’re just the surface of it. And when I say _you_ , I mean _the decision I made to send you away_.” There’s a sad smile on his face. Looking at him now, Mo Guan Shan realizes he doesn’t pout anymore, show way less of his emotions. When he does, it’s always through smiles. “You know, the usual… People change. I wasn’t the same after five years, and he wasn’t either, and I was fine with that but he wasn’t. I kept clinging on to him, but he kept trying to pull away. Well not really… He’s mad, he’s been for years. He’ll calm down eventually.”

He seems to be trying to convince himself that what he's saying is true, and Guan Shan doesn’t understand how he can be so hopeful. He just doesn’t. _How?_

“Why do you hold on to him?” he asks, and Jian Yi understands it’s not about him holding on to Zhan Zheng Xi, it’s about why anybody would hold on to someone they don’t know anymore. Jian Yi understands, but he still makes it about Zhan Zheng Xi because really… does anything else matter?

“He asked why I left him when I came back. He didn’t ask why I left, he asked why I left _him_. Surely that must have counted for something, right?”

He doesn’t miss the doubt in Jian Yi’s voice. He knows it wouldn’t have been there months before, knows it’s growing day after day. He doesn’t understand why Jian Yi would hold on to a simple word put at the en of a sentence when Red wasn’t able to hold on to someone who had knelt before him, pledged allegiance, swore to giving anything through vows made of acts. No matter how angry Guan Shan was, no matter how hurtful and vicious he’d become, He Tian had done anything he could to please him. To be accepted.

But he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to say it, if he should even say it, and surely Jian Yi doesn’t want him to say anything. There’s an uneasiness in the air broken after a few seconds by a voice coming from God knows where.

‘ _White wolf to little brat. White wolf to little brat. Do you copy?’_

Jian Yi looks pissed off when he takes a walkie-talkie out of his back pocket and says, “Qiu, we’ve talked about this, _I_ am White Wolf, you’re… I don’t know, Old Wolf, Ugly Wolf, Buff Wolf, I don’t care what kind of wolf, just not white for fuck’s sake.” He sighs. “Do you copy Dumb Wolf?”

‘ _Copy Little Piece of Shit. Mama Raven sent out the eagle to retrieve Wild Monkey, Little Piece of Shit, Majestic White Wolf, and… uh… Crippled Firefox? Over.”_

 _That’s you_ Jian Yi mouths toward Guan Shan. “Copy, Dumb Wolf. Call me Little Piece of Shit again and I’ll neutralize your ass out of the universe, over.”

‘ _I sure copied that Little Piece of Shit, I’d like to see you try. Over.’_

“Whatever Dumb Wolf. I just don’t want to get neutralized myself, so like… do your job, cause we both know if I’m neutralized, Papa Wolf is going to get mad, and Papa Wolf is kind of a pile of shit so… Over.”

_'On it. Like father like son. Going off walkie. Over.'_

Jian Yi turns to Guan Shan as if what he’s just witnessed is normal.

“Can’t you just use your fucking phone?”

 

 

 

He Tian was leaning against the wall of the building facing his old high school when he spotted Zhu Wen. He walked toward her and watched her silently mouth _shit_ to herself. She looked surprised when she heard her friend, right next to her, call his name with a big smile, until she remembered she was Zhan Zheng Xi’s sister. _‘Your brother’s class isn’t going to end for at least another hour. He sent me to get you.’_ he said, and then turned to Zhu Wen. _‘Hi, I’m He Tian, one of Zhan Zi Qian’s brother’s best friends, nice to meet you...’_ with a smile way too convincing for how fake she knew it was. ‘ _Zhu Wen.’_ she answered with an equally fake smile. _‘Oh, Zhu Wen? I believe you’ve met my brother.’_ Next to her, Zhan Zi Qian was way too excited. _‘Is that true? Do you know each other?’_ He could see on Zhu Wen’s face she just wanted to ask him what the fuck he was doing here, but he had her cornered. He had been through months of He Cheng trying to have He Tian talk to him again while doing everything he could in order for He Tian to never find Guan Shan, including keeping the Zhu clan away from him. Now that he had one, he was not letting go. _‘No,_ _I’_ _ve_ _only met He Tian’s brother. He was an intern for my father’_ _s_ _company or something like that.’_ He kept nodding and smiling at Zheng Xi’s sister babbling, and then went to get what he came to get in the first place. _‘You wouldn’t happen to know about another intern? I’ve lost touch, and my brother can’t help me on that matter. Chu Heng?”_ It was obvious she was struggling to keep on with the smiling facade. She seemed to be trying to find a way out, looking around where she knew her underlings were stationed. A way out she wouldn’t be able to find, he was sure of it: they would never dare to take him down in front of so many witnesses, not when he was showing no aggressiveness whatsoever. _“I’m so sorry… Chu Heng died a little bit more than a year ago...’ That bitch. ‘No, it can’t be…’_ he said, bringing his hand to his face, knowing perfectly well the movement would lift his jacket just enough for her to notice the holster of the gun at his waist. Zhan Zi Qian started to go on about how sorry she was for his loss, but what truly interested him was what Zhu Wen was going to say after that sigh she was about to draw. She was surrendering. _‘_ _Yeah, I’m sorry. I was told everybody who knew him loved him dearly. At the funerals, my father found himself deeply moved by the cries of his neighbor. A little girl, barely nine._ _Not very talkative. As silent as a cemetery._ _He told me he didn’t understand kids this age could face so much.’_ She paused and looked at him straight in the eyes. _‘_ Know _this much_.’

 

 

 

“Here, take it” Qiu says as he gives Zhu Li a bottle of water.

They barely know each other, but they still do. Far away in the past, so far away she isn’t sure it is even real, there are three days of running away with Qiu and two other guys. Running away from a training camp that did nothing but drain them. Running away before He Cheng found them and told them the Triads would treat them as traitors if they were to extend their well-earned run-away time.

“He Cheng’s name was on the package. On the bomb.” she says.

Qiu doesn’t answer because he knows Zhu Li knows better than to believe whatever the fuck is written on a box that was never meant to be read by the people it targeted. Rumors, that’s the only reason He Cheng’s name was on these packages. It was there for the delivery guy, the passerby, the curious neighbor leaving for work. It was there so that nobodies could whisper his name as a secret, a chain of nobodies until it reaches a higher ground, a dangerous ground, a war. As dumb as she is, he knows she has some common sense.

“It’s a mess,” she adds. “The Mexicans are going to lose it, probably go after the Triads… After 14K. And 14K well… After the He clan… That’s a mess.”

“Jian Yi has a meeting with Ramón. The kid’s got his way with words.”

“Ramón is a bitch. I’m pretty sure the fucker can speak Mandarin, he just doesn’t want to. I don’t reckon the kid speaks Spanish. Consider yourself lucky if he’s still alive by the end of the meeting.”

“They can’t risk it. They can’t risk going after the Jian family, because they can’t risk a war on Triad’s territory.”

“The Sinaloa syndicate can risk anything, trust me. It’s not a handful of Mexicans against the Triads we’re talking about. They’ve got some of the most influential officials in the palm of their hand. We’re talking Triads against government here.”

“Isn’t it what it’s always about anyway?”

From her, a sigh. “Yeah, but we had something. Harmony. The machinery of it all was just so… efficient. Effective. But now that… Now that my father and my brother are dead, my clan is going to fall into crumbles, and then… Who’s gonna do the mediation between the Triads and the Mexicans? Who’s gonna do the mediation between the Triads and the government if there’s no Zhu clan anymore?”

From him, a shrug. “There’s always someone. If you can make profit out of it, then there’s someone willing to do it.”

They barely know each other, but they still do. That’s why he pretends he doesn’t hear, pretends he doesn’t see when she breaks down. He thinks, _she has earned it_. He thinks, _if she was to run away now, I would probably close my eyes,_ _pretend I don’t see shit,_ _and go after her after a couple of days_.

And for how much she had resented He Cheng for _‘snitching on them’_ at the time, Qiu only remembers his gray eyes looking at him as he was about to sneak out of the tent. _“Three days. I’ll give_ _you_ _three days. Make the best out of it.”_

So it is only natural for him to say, “Three hours. You can mourn, and cry, and shout for three hours. Then you gotta snap out of it.”

It’s not enough, but it’s the duration of their flight. It’s not enough, but they’re adults now.

 

 

 

_“You shouldn’t do this.”_

A little girl. _The_ little girl. Barely seven, knees scratched, tangled hair, and freckles due to long hours spent under the sun of the upcoming summer. The neighbor Zhu Wen had talked about. The one she couldn’t get anything from, if that _‘not talkative’_ part was anything to go by. The one they didn’t know about back then. Unregistered. Invisible. Nonexistent.

 _“Do what?”_ He Tian asked.

_“Sit on someone else’s tomb.”_

_“Well I won’t be able to sit on my own when the time comes, will I?”_

She shrugged it off, putting a bucket full of water on the ground, a sponge in her hand, and then wiping the already immaculate tombstone.

 _“You don’t have to wash it every week.”_ He Tian said. _“Those things don’t get dirty that easily._ ”

She didn’t answer anything, and if her seven years of experience with life had had her understanding the implication of what He Tian had just said – how would he know she washed it every week if he didn’t have her watched – she didn’t raise it.

She was one of those invisible children wandering around China. The one too many kid. The second one in a one-child policy country, the third one in a recent two-child policy country. Sometimes, He Tian forgot how much of a luxury it was to have a brother. To _be_ a brother. He Tian too was a one too many child. The difference laid in the money. There was money to back up his right to exist. There was none for her. No right to study, no right to work, no right to marry, no right to build a family, no right to live.

 _“I know who you are.”_ she said.

In the distance, there were children laughing in the school playground ironically located on the other side of the street. A wall barely keeping in the energy of children, fifteen meters, a wall doing nothing but accommodate the dead. Life, fifteen meters, death. She wasn’t on the right side, and at the same time, she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

_“Do you?”_

A shrug. _“He told me about you.”_

 _“Mo Guan Shan?_ ”

She didn’t answer, but she glanced at the tomb looking confused.

 _“Where is he?”_ she asked, but she seemed too sad to know he was still alive. _“A son must be buried with his mother.”_ she added, pointing at the tombstone. _Mo Yanmei_. A tomb He Tian had visited numerous times to ask for forgiveness.

_“He’s not in this cemetery.”_

_“It’s not right.”_ she said, and then she sighed, shooing away a butterfly flying by, and then sitting next to He Tian on the tomb. _“Sorry Mrs. Mo.”_ she said while doing so. _“I’ll bring flowers next time.”_

 _“She’s stolen every last bouquet of flowers she’s brought to you Mrs. Mo…”_ He Tian said, talking to the sky.

 _“That not true!”_ she shouted, but then he turned to her with a smirk, making it clear he knew she was lying, and she guiltily hang her head in shame. _“I don’t have money to buy flowers… I take them from a rich lady’s tomb. She has new ones every week anyway…”_

“ _Resourceful…”_ he said, and then, a smile growing bigger on his face, _“So what did he say about me? Little Mo?”_

_“Little..? Oh… He taught me your special move.”_

_“My special move?”_

_“Yeah, he called it_ the balls’ twister _.”_ He Tian couldn’t help but laugh at that. _“He said if any grown-ups were acting weird around me, I had to twist their balls and run, and scream ‘_ there’s a fucking pervert after me’ _and call the police and call...”_ She looked down at the ground. _“…him.”_

He sighed, got up, and took the sponge from her. It seemed pointless, wiping an already clean tomb, but it was somewhat comforting, like cleaning his own soul with an old rag.

_“You know, they’d get the point… You don’t have to say ‘fucking’.”_

_“He said that’s what I had to say.”_

_“Little Mo uses some words as punctuation. A language habit. You don’t have to say it to get your point across.”_

He realized his mistake a bit too late, and even if she was only seven, even if he was convincing himself she was too young to catch it, he still flinched when she said,

_“Uses?”_

_“Ah, sorry.”_ he said, looking back at her. _“Sometimes I forget.”_ She looked suspicious, but she didn’t say anything, so after a while, He Tian asked, _“What’s your name?”_

 _“Fang Mei.”_ she said as He Tian nodded.

_“That’s quite the wounds you’ve got on your knees, Fang Mei.”_

She shrugged, and then, _“I scored a basket, so I slid on my knees to celebrate but it was concrete.”_

He smirked, imagining the scene. _“And the bruise on you ribs?”_ he asked, watching her flinch. He’d seen it when she had shooed away the butterfly, lifting her shirt in the process.

“ _I fell.”_ she answered, not looking convinced herself.

 _“You fell?”_ he asked again, but this time, he thought she wasn’t going to answer, because she kept looking at him for a good twenty seconds before she said anything, as if she was debating whether she could trust him or not.

_“Used the balls’ twister on my mother’s boyfriend.”_

He clenched his jaw. _“Was he_ acting weird _around you?”_

_“No, he was just acting mean, I thought it would work too.”_

_“What did your mom say?”_

Another shrug. _“She doesn’t say much. She sleeps a lot.”_

 _“You have siblings, right?”_ She nodded. _“Where are they?”_

 _“Gone.”_ She probably saw the somber look on He Tian’s face, because then, twisting her fingers, she added, _“I would have gone too if… It’s fine, I don’t mind.”_

_“And if you could go now, would you?”_

It was such a stupid question. Nobody in their right mind would say yes to that, not even a child. Not when some dude taught said child to twist the balls of anybody asking them to follow them. It was a stupid question, and he had no plan, and at no point had he meant to play the good Samaritan, but when she shyly nodded to answer his question, he knew he would not be able to leave her behind. He wondered why for a bit. Wondered if he wasn’t able to do so because he pitied her, or because Little Mo obviously cared for her. Maybe both. It didn’t matter.

 

 _“Do you know what happened to Mo Guan Shan?”_ he asked.

She had nodded, and he had said _‘Well I guess you’re leaving_ then’, and now, they were a street away from her place, where she would pack her things. He Tian also wanted to know if there was a loving mother behind, one that would seek after her once he would have shipped her to his brother’s. Surely this was manipulative, but He Tian couldn’t give less of a shit: He Cheng was so desperate to have He Tian talk to him again, he would have agreed to absolutely anything, which included raising a kid and buying her an identity and a right to exist.

But for now, he needed to know, and looking at the way she stopped walking at his question, frozen on the spot, she seemed to know.

_“I don’t know”_ she still said, lying skills close to zero. 

_“But you do.”_

There was desperation on her face when she said, _“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anybody.”_

 _“Anybody? Did a girl come to see you?”_ Shyly, she nodded. _“And you didn’t tell her what happened?”_ She shook her head. _“She’s really unlikable, isn’t she?”_ A nod. _“Is that why you didn’t tell her?”_ Nothing. _“You know you can trust me, right? That’s why you’re talking to me… You know he was my friend… So just tell me why you can’t tell anybody.”_

She seemed genuinely scared now, and He Tian had never been good at comforting people, let alone kids.

 _“You’re not leaving me there, right? I can’t tell you what happened if you’re only pretending.”_ He Tian frowned, she went on. _“He said he was going to cut my tongue off if I said something...”_

_“Who said that?”_

_“My mother’s boyfriend. She was sleeping.”_

He Tian blew out the smoke of the cigarette he’d lit on the way. _“I won’t leave you behind.”_ and then, when she asked, _“I promise.”_

 _“I was hidden under the couch, so I didn’t see everything… But there were two men that would come in our place often. Mom gave them money, but this time, she didn’t have any. So they started to… They started to hit her. Then I heard Guan Shan in the hall telling them to leave, and they began to fight, and then he wasn’t there anymore.”_ She saw He Tian’s face darken, taking it the wrong way. _“I wanted to call the police, but mom screamed at me. I’m sorry…”_

He Tian shrugged. _“That’s fine.”_ he said, as he started to walk again. When he heard her little footsteps behind him, he said, _“Under the couch? Really? What a shit hideout.”_

Creditors. The violent kind. Now, all He Tian had to do was to figure out who they were working for, who that woman had borrowed from. With that information, it would take an hour, maybe two before he’d be able to trace them down.

 _“Did they ever come back?”_ he asked, and he wasn’t surprised to hear that no, they never came back.

She talked about Mo Guan Shan with a lot of fondness, the way one would talk about their only friend, about the only person that cares. She had a light in her eyes, a fire that must have come from him for how unnatural it seemed on her. Something she was not born with, something he must have given her, along with a bunch of bad habits. A bit of swearing, a bit of aggressiveness, a whole lot of fighting. It suited her though.

 

She barely pushed the door of the flat that a rough voice reached them. At the end of the hall, in the living room, there was the boyfriend she had talked about. _“You’r_ _e_ _fucking late! Again!”_ he screamed, but they could not see him. He Tian kept looking at the end of that hall even when she looked up at him with fear in her eyes, even when he heard the stomping their way. A man in his forties, face distorted by anger, appeared. There was a second of silence when he saw He Tian along the little girl. _“Who the fuck are...”_ and then he was able to answer his own question. One step back, two steps back, looking around like a trapped little animal, and He Tian couldn’t help but think he was absolutely pathetic. Sure, He Tian was feared, but not to this extent. The guy seemed about to piss himself. There was no threat on He Tian’s face, no knife in his hand, no gun in a holster. And then it hit him, realization growing as fast as a smile on his face. The mad dude from She Li’s bar. The one he’d seen on the video of Guan Shan’s one on three. _“Oh.”_ he said. There was no point in being this terrified if he hadn’t done something that could get him killed. There was only one thing that had been done that could get people killed, and this dude seemed to know what it was. Mr. Third Shadow seemed to know very well what it was.

Trying to take a step forward, he felt a little hand holding him back, holding on to his jeans. _“The balls’ twister doesn’t work on him...”_ she said, sounding worried, blind to the apparent terror of the man at the end of the hall. _“Why don’t you go pack your stuff?”_ he said as he sent a text to his men. _“I’m going to talk to your mother’s boyfriend in the living room. Once you’re done, you can leave, my friends are waiting downstairs. Don’t come near the living room though, we need some privacy…”_

He Tian knew there had been no point in lying now that she could hear the cries of pain of this man. If the humming he could hear from her from time to time when this waste of oxygen stopped crying for a second was anything to go by, she wasn’t phased at all, nor was her mother, knocked out on the couch, tourniquet still on her arm, empty syringe in her limp hand.

It took He Tian thirty seconds to confirm he was one of the culprits. A minute to figure out he was the one that came late to the party. Ten minutes to get the names of the other two. Twenty to get their location. Would take him hours to get the name of his boss seeing how he seemed even more scared to die by his hand than by He Tian’s. When he reached for the entrance with a bloody, knocked-out man on his shoulder, he saw Fang Mei with a bowl of instant noodles in her hands, her bag by the door.

_“I gotta let something for my mom to eat… She always struggles when she wakes up.”_

Maybe he should have asked if she really wanted to go, if she really wanted to leave her mother behind when it was obvious she loved her. The hint of sadness in her eyes when she said _mom._ The way she held on to this bowl for dear life. He didn’t though. He nodded. _“I’ll wait for you downstairs.”_ he said as he texted the location of one of the two other culprits to his underlings. He had reached the street by the time he was booking a flight to the location of the third one. Singapore.

 

 

 

 

He sees He Tian’s brother talking with Qiu when he walks toward the exit of the airport. Something about Jian Yi. Something about the Mexicans. When his gaze catches He Cheng’s, he ignores him and keeps going. Still, he knows who will be waiting for him by the exit, and when, walking through the glass door, he sees him, he feels his heart beating fast. Too fast. He even wonders if it was beating faster now than when a _fucking bomb_ blew up everything. It almost feels like he hasn’t left for Hong Kong. The light is the same than this day. The crowd is as big. The flight attendants passing by are dressed the same. As if he had changed his mind at the last minute. As if he’d turned around. If he erases the last year from his mind, if he makes a collage, then him walking toward He Tian, at this moment, is nothing more than holding on. Not letting go. It’s him telling monkey guy to fuck off, it’s him flipping He Cheng off. But it’s not, because he had left in the end.

Fled.

“Hi Little Mo.”

It seems like a lifetime since he’s last heard it. The nickname. Heard for real, not through the filter of a phone. He stays there for a while, a few meters away. Watches him. Takes in what he couldn’t get himself to notice when he was wrecked. How He Tian has grown taller, more muscular. How the perpetual smirk is now gone, not so perpetual after all. How his voice is now lower, just a bit. It seems like a lifetime since he’s seen him. Really seen him. Taking in everything. The last time he’s done it has happened in an elevator, and for how drunk he was, he still remembers every minute. Shouldn’t have left.

Fled.

_Why did you hate him already?_

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t say _hi_ back, and He Tian takes a long drag of his cigarette, eye darkening at the sight of his brother coming their way. “Zhu Li’s going to be in the third car.” he says, a movement of the chin to point at it. “See you around.” he adds, opening the door of the car he was leaning against.

“Hey.” Guan Shan calls, and He Tian stops all movements. He takes the steps separating them, and takes the cigarette He Tian was about to throw away from his hand. Then, taking a drag and blowing it on the side, “We need to talk.”

He watches as He Tian’s gaze scrutinizes his face, and he feels like it’s been an eternity since he’s last been watched this way. He Tian raises his hand, his fingertips grazing against his cheek, and then his thumb slides against Mo Guan Shan’s forehead, where an ash stain was forming a line on his skin.

“Yeah, I think we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yep, fifth chapter. Kinda long. Two more to go.
> 
> I hope you didn't see too many mistakes and you enjoyed it overall! Feel free to tell me what you thought of it!
> 
> Thank you very much for all the kudos and comments, it means a lot!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked my lack of vocabulary. 
> 
> It's kind of dark, I didn't mean for it to be this dark. I'm generally more into writing humor, but I like drama too, so there's no inbetween for me. This one came out angsty.
> 
> I'll try to write the next chapter as fast as I can!
> 
> Feel free to tell me what you thought of it.
> 
> Edit : just realized I forgot to say that I don't condone drunk sex, please be safe.  
> Also I'm really sorry to whoever had to read this chapter when I first posted it, seeing how many errors there were, and how many times I had to edit it. I guess some are still left, so sorry about that too!


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